The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford

by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

First published 2026

Richard Milford finally meets his end in 1920s Oklahoma, not far from Tulsa and close enough to the 1921 Race Massacre that the town of Newville still feels its weight. The Milford family has lived well by exploiting their neighbors for generations. Richard continued the tradition as a moonshiner and serial womanizer during Prohibition's peak. Now someone has killed him, and only his women gather to mourn. Four suspects emerge immediately: his "wives" Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne. Each woman tells her version of events, but their accounts don't align. As the Great Depression looms and the community grapples with rapid social change, the search for Richard's killer reveals how many different truths one small town can hold. The investigation becomes less about finding the murderer and more about understanding how stories shape reality when everyone has reason to lie.

Genres: drama, literary-fiction, american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery

Vibes: atmospheric, dark, intricate, morally-complex, thought-provoking

Tropes: family-secrets, multiple-perspectives, unreliable-narrator, whodunit

Setting: Newville, Oklahoma, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Period: 1920s, Prohibition era, Great Depression

176 pages · Hardcover · Scribner

Content warnings: death, murder, racism

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