Literary Black Book Club with Genay

The Literary Black Book Club will meet every month to discuss mostly contemporary fiction written by Black authors.  We’ll also share a light snack and hopefully some laughs.

This month we’ll discuss Nafissa Thompson Spires’ 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, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford.

“A deeply satisfying novel that cracles as much with Thompson-Spires’s singular intelligence as it does with mystery. I loved this ode to wild women, small towns, wily rumors and Black humor so much. A must-read.”—Angela Flournoy, author of The Wilderness

“That Nafissa Thompson-Spires can conjure so much atmosphere in so few pages is both a feat and a mystery. From oil money to the rodeo, electric love and sudden death, Oklahoma positively blooms with violence and mercy alike. The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford unfolds with rare economy and force.”—Kiley Reid, author of Come and Get It

Rich Milford is dead. At last.

We find ourselves in 1920’s Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Race 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 was an infamous moonshiner and womanizer who, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried with only 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, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes.

In an electric follow-up to her 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—structured like a stupefying line dance. In her uniquely powerful, humorous manner, Thompson-Spires takes on the interdependent clash of the traditional and the newfangled in this gobsmackingly excellent novel.

Contact Genay, at bookclubs@mcnallyjackson.com with any questions.