Thompson-Spires writes fiction, and her new novel pulls from a family history that works as a warning about electricity. In The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, the title character is a terrible person who ties his abuse and cruelty to a lightning strike he took as a child. The book is a debut, and Thompson-Spires explains how that idea sprang from her own life — including her own close brush with death from a strike.
The first bolt came on a dark and stormy night, a blueish pulse entering Thompson-Spires’s chest, followed a millisecond later by a second flash. She lay face up in her bed, stiff and still save for her heartbeat, another pulsing thing. She watched the bolts enter through a slat in her AC unit. The scent of singed skin or hardware in the air is not something she recalls, but the terror of being alive by the grace of God and because lightning bypassed her heart and ribs remains with her.
The Odds Against Her
According to Jacob Stern’s recent Atlantic article, the odds of being struck by lightning in the United States in any given year stand at one in 1.2 million. Thompson-Spires is neither the first nor the only member of her family to suffer this fate. Family lore has it that her maternal great-grandfather Jethro, who spent his life and met his end in East Texas, was himself struck by a bolt when he was still a teenager.
For the first fifteen years of his life, their father was held in bondage, a wound unlike most others. Jethro’s siblings credited the lightning for their brother’s possessed a violent temper. A maker of illicit spirits and a man of notorious cruelty, he later married three wives and fathered forty children, all of whom he treated harshly with a whip.
The Stimulator Malfunction
The spinal cord stimulator Thompson-Spires had installed through open-back surgery was the device the bolt aimed at. She had to switch it off, since it operates via an implanted rechargeable battery and a remote control, and then return again and again for reprogramming by her reps until the stimulator ceased producing extra pain. During the procedure, she came back to consciousness several times with her face close to the anesthesiologist’s pelvis, begging him for more juice, though the lightning she requested was not what she meant.
A Childhood Full of Electrical Contact
By June 16, 2022, the date of her lightning strike, Thompson-Spires had already suffered six concussions. Three of them were caused by falling while taking heavy medication for her chronic pain, and three came from her antics: a grandstanding handstand during her home yoga practice, an accident with a pirouette spinner when she decided at age thirty-nine that she was ready for pointe shoes after only three years of undergrad ballet, and a twerking attempt that left her with a temporary dent in her forehead. Her skull is thick, her head is hard, and her behind is flat. But high voltage? That too.
In first grade, she performed a poem that began with the line, “I wish I were electrified.” Three years later, during a rare SoCal storm, she survived electrocution after she stuck tweezers into a socket in her childhood family room. The force blew out the power in her house, the surge throwing her a couple of feet across the room. She dropped the hot tweezers, their tips blackened, before the current fully reached her body. She told someone this story, along with that of the lightning, once at brunch, and they said they couldn’t find direct proof of it, but electricity attracts electricity. Thompson-Spires couldn’t find proof of that either, though she did learn about sliders, people who believe themselves conduits for electricity, and found several examples of inexplicable lightning-related phenomena.
The Olesen Family
The Olesen family of Illinois appeared in a 1997 episode of Unsolved Mysteries. Between 1899 and 1966, ten members of the family were either hit by lightning or came close to being hit. Some people have survived multiple strikes instead. Melvyn Roberts, a man from South Carolina, claimed he was struck eleven times.
What the Lightning Explains
Thompson-Spires’s novel asks whether a bolt can explain a life. Richard Milford’s abuse and his brash, abusive behavior are ascribed to barometric pressure, the electricity remaining in his body and hands from a childhood strike. The novel’s conceit stems in part from her attempt to grapple with her family’s and her own trauma and what constitutes truth. But what interests her most is the lightning, the actual lightning.
The Author’s Own Story
The poet’s life has been marked by a long string of strange accidents and illnesses. A lightning strike, a near-electrocution, six concussions, and a lifetime of medical oddities that follow her everywhere define her story. When she was young, she recited a poem in school that opened with the line, “I wish I were electrified.” Later, in Southern California, a household accident involving tweezers destroyed the electricity in her home and sent her flying across the room. Then, after the lightning strike, her body’s own device began to fail on its own, sending sudden shocks through her legs and spine without warning or reason.
The novel’s conceit is a family drama with a supernatural undertow. A terrible person in his own right, Richard Milford has nearly every terrible thing happen to him. The novel catalogs his traumas, searching for an all-encompassing origin story that might explain his delinquency. A hot-tempered moonshiner and ne’er-do-well with four “wives,” Rich ascribes his brash, abusive behavior to barometric pressure, the electricity remaining in his body and hands from a lightning strike when he was a child.
Key Facts Box
– Debut novel: The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford
– Lightning strike odds: one in 1.2 million per year (Jacob Stern, Atlantic)
– Author’s strike date: June 16, 2022
– Jethro’s siblings credited the lightning for their brother’s violent temper
– Olesen family: ten members struck or nearly struck, 1899–1966
– Melvyn Roberts: claimed eleven lightning strikes
The novel is a debut, and Thompson-Spires tells the story of how that idea grew from her own life. The family’s history of lightning strikes — including her own near-fatal strike and her great-grandfather’s violent temper blamed on a bolt — informs her novel’s premise about the origins of a troubled man’s behavior.
Source material: “How a Lightning Strike Affected My Identity—And My Main Character’s,” Literary Hub.
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