Nafissa Thompson-Spires: The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford
About this Event
Join us at Brookline Booksmith to celebrate the release of The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford with author Nafissa Thompson-Spires.
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EVENT ATTENDEES: Preorder your copy of The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford through this page. Books will also be available for purchase at the event. Books can be picked up 30 minutes before the event in the event space.
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The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford: A Novel
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, tall tale of a debut novel about the M**der of an infamous moonshiner and the cacophony of true stories a small town can tell about itself.
Rich Milford is dead. At last.
We find ourselves in Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Massacre of 1921. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have led plentiful lives 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 is an infamous moonshiner and womanizer and, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried with no one but his women to mourn him but a question remains: who killed him, and why?
Top suspects are his four “wives,” Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne. But as their stories burst to light in a volley of competing narratives, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes.
In an electric follow-up to her beloved and critically acclaimed debut collection, Nafissa Thompson-Spires once again serves up a brilliant distillation of front-of-mind happenings—think, cults of personality, capitalism run amok in politics, and rampant societal distrust—this time magicked into taut historical fiction structured as a stupefying line dance. In her uniquely powerful, humorous manner, Thompson-Spires takes on the interdependent clash of the traditional and the new-fangled in this genre-bending, gob-smackingly excellent debut.
Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People. She earned a doctorate in English from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the University of Illinois. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review Daily, New York magazine’s “The Cut,” The Root, The White Review, Ploughshares, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America 1619–2019,and The 1619 Project, among other publications. In addition to a debut novel, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Rich Milford, her young adult debut is forthcoming. She is the recipient of a 2024 United States Artists Grant and a 2019 Whiting Award.
About Brookline Booksmith
Brookline Booksmith, thriving in the heart of Coolidge Corner in Brookline, Massachusetts, since 1961, is one of New England’s premier independent bookstores. We offer a vast selection of books, ranging from current bestsellers to the most eclectic titles. We are also known for our beautiful and inspired gifts. Customers buy and sell gently used books in our treasured Used Book Cellar and enjoy our bountiful bargain book selection. We host award-winning events series (including our groundbreaking Transnational Literature Series), offering more than 300 author talks, community conversations, and book clubs annually. Find more at brooklinebooksmith.com!
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