The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award–longlisted, “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People comes a sly, spry literary debut novel about the murder of an infamous moonshiner—and the cacophony of “true” stories a small town can tell about itself.

Rich Milford is dead. At last.

It’s 1920s Oklahoma, just far enough outside Tulsa and just long enough after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have lived well on the backs of the townspeople of Newville. Now, on the ominous brink of the Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford—an infamous moonshiner and womanizer—has apparently crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried, with only his women left to mourn him. But one question remains: Who killed him, and why?

The top suspects are his four “wives”: Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne. But as their stories come to light, the very idea of a single true story begins to unravel.

In this electric follow-up to her acclaimed debut collection, Nafissa Thompson-Spires once again delivers a brilliant distillation of urgent contemporary concerns—cults of personality, capitalism run amok in politics, and widespread societal distrust—structured with the dizzying precision of a line dance.

With her signature wit, intelligence, and stylistic daring, Thompson-Spires explores the collision between tradition and modernity in a bold, surprising, and unforgettable novel.