How a Lightning Strike Affected My Identity—And My Main Character’s
In my forthcoming debut novel, the Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, nearly every terrible thing that can happen to a man has happened to the titular character, a terrible person in his own right. The beginning of.
The author’s debut novel, Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, explores the life of Richard Milford, a violent and abusive man who attributes his behavior to a childhood lightning strike. The novel’s premise stems from the author’s attempt to understand their own family’s trauma and the nature of truth. Richard, a hot-tempered moonshiner with four wives, blames his aggression on residual electricity from the lightning strike he experienced as a child. This explanation begins to unravel when he alienates all the women in his life. The novel reflects the author’s exploration of how trauma shapes identity and behavior.
The author describes a lightning strike they experienced in their Ithaca bedroom during a storm. The strike entered through a slat in their air conditioning unit, and they recall lying stiffly in bed, feeling their heartbeat but not smelling any signs of burning. According to Jacob Stern’s article in The Atlantic, the odds of being struck by lightning in the U.S. in a given year are 1 in 1.2 million. The author notes that lightning strikes run in their family, including their maternal great-grandfather Jethro, who was struck as a teenager in East Texas and later became a violent moonshiner with three wives and forty children.
After the lightning strike, the author’s spinal cord stimulator—a device implanted during open-back surgery to manage chronic pain—began malfunctioning. This stimulator, a type of permanent TENS machine (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation), sends small electrical pulses to block pain signals. The malfunction caused violent shocks, described as milder bolts of lightning, which forced the author to turn off the device and seek repeated reprogramming. The author had previously endured six concussions, three from falls while medicated for pain and three from accidents, including a handstand, a pirouette spinner mishap, and a twerking attempt.
The author shares a history of electrical accidents in their life. At age six, they recited a poem titled I wish I were electrified in a school speech competition. At age nine, during a rare storm in Southern California, they survived electrocution after inserting tweezers into a socket, which blew out the house’s power and threw them across the room. The author also mentions the concept of sliders, people who believe they attract electricity, and references the Olesen family from Illinois, who experienced ten lightning strikes or near-strikes between 1899 and 1966. Another example is Melvyn Roberts from South Carolina, who claimed to have been struck by lightning eleven times.
In the two months following the lightning strike, the author experienced an intense identity crisis, feeling a darker part of themselves awaken. This period led to a temporary sense of invincibility, prompting risky behaviors and poor decisions the author would not have made otherwise. The author acknowledges that, like their fictional character Richard Milford, they initially wanted to blame their actions on external factors such as the storm. However, they ultimately took responsibility for their choices, made amends where possible, and worked to develop a stronger sense of self and self-compassion. The novel reflects this struggle to balance empathy with accountability for one’s actions.
The author suggests a possible connection between repeated electrical traumas and their family’s history, referencing theories like *epigenetic scarring* (changes in gene expression due to trauma) and *intergenerational trauma* (the transmission of trauma across generations). To avoid further incidents, the author now actively avoids storms, both literal and metaphorical, as well as railroads, given that their great-grandfather was also hit by a train and survived. The novel’s exploration of Richard Milford’s life serves as a way for the author to process their own experiences and the complex legacy of trauma in their family.
