The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Nafissa Thompson-Spires [Book Review]

Richard Milford had four wives, plenty of enemies, and a remarkable talent for making people want him dead. Nafissa Thompson-Spires turns his murder into a wickedly funny mystery where everyone has a story.

Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars

Richard Milford was rich, entitled, and convinced that money gave him permission to do whatever he wanted. Which is exactly how he ended up with four wives and plenty of enemies.

The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford by Nafissa Thompson-Spires is a darkly funny, genre-bending novel about who gets to decide what really happened.

Richard Milford Is Dead

Richard is a moonshiner and a womanizer, and the richest man in Newville, a fictional all-Black town in 1920s Oklahoma at the height of Prohibition. Now he’s dead and buried, with only his women left to mourn him.

The obvious suspects are his four “wives,” Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne, along with Alberta, the cook who has held the Milford household together for decades. Each woman has her own grievances, secrets, and version of events.

Everybody Has a Version

The mystery is part of the appeal, but the question I kept coming back to was bigger: who decides which version of a story becomes the truth?

Everyone is saying something, but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth. The competing accounts keep changing what we think of Richard, his wives, and the town, and people remember things in suspiciously convenient ways. There’s some smart commentary here about credibility and reputation, and how fast a version of events can harden into fact because the right person said it loudly enough.

I did have to stop a few times and untangle who was claiming what. The contradictions are what make the book work, but I really should have kept a chart nearby.

The Wives Get to Be People

One of my favorite things about the novel is that Thompson-Spires never reduces Lally, Sophronia, Georgette, and Vivianne to “Richard Milford’s wives.” Each perspective lets her be complicated in her own right.

They’re angry, and they’re ambitious. They make choices that are sometimes understandable and sometimes not.

That makes the book’s take on female agency far more interesting than a tidy revenge fantasy. These women have spent years accommodating a man who assumes his wants should dictate everyone else’s lives. What happens when they finally take their own desires seriously?

Getting Rich and Doing Good Are Not the Same Thing

Newville is more than a backdrop for Richard’s terrible behavior. Thompson-Spires uses the town to look at wealth, race, and the myth of individual success.

The book keeps asking what someone owes the community around them, and how long a town should put up with a man who thinks money makes him untouchable.

Final Thoughts

Beyond those bigger ideas, it is also fun to read. At 176 pages, it moves fast, and the dark humor is a huge part of why it works.

Thompson-Spires has a sharp, sly way of writing about terrible behavior without turning anyone into a punchline. There’s plenty of scandal, gossip, and resentment, and the writing never lets it feel cheap.

The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford is clever, darkly funny, and much more complicated than a straightforward whodunit.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for an advanced reader’s copy. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.