{
  "id": 12347126,
  "title": "How a Lightning Strike Affected My Identity—And My Main Character’s",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/06/how-a-lightning-strike-affected-my-identity-and-my-main-characters",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-10-06T09:08:15.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Literary Hub",
    "slug": "literary-hub",
    "url": "https://lithub.com/how-a-lightning-strike-affected-my-identity-and-my-main-characters/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "My forthcoming debut novel, The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, follows a man who has experienced nearly every terrible thing imaginable. The story begins by examining his many traumas in search of an origin story that might explain his misbehavior. As the protagonist, Richard, ascribes his rough and abusive behavior to barometric pressure and the lingering electricity in his body from a childhood lightning strike, the concept of lightning serves as a central motif. It is a dark and stormy night when lightning zapped across my chest, followed by a brief flash. I am certain that wind and rain continued to batter against my bedroom windows in a converted attic with low, sloping cathedral ceilings. As the bolts entered through a gap in my AC unit, I recall vividly lying still on my bed, with the exception of my heartbeat, a pulsating sensation. Recent studies suggest that the odds of being struck by lightning in the United States in any given year are one in 1.2 million, but this is not the first or only instance of such an occurrence in my family. My maternal great-grandfather, Jethro, lived and died in East Texas and was struck by lightning when he was a teenager. Jethro's siblings believed that the lightning was responsible for the violent temper of their brother, who later became a notorious moonshiner and abusive husband, fathering forty children. My quest to write this novel began with the consideration of how the lives of these women might have turned out if they had sought revenge against Richard, and how the aftermath of a near-death experience, as well as the context of the Jim Crow South, might have impacted him. However, it was not until additional peculiar events and information came to light that I fully grasped the nature of this character. In the aftermath of my strike, my spinal cord stimulator began to malfunction, causing intense and unprovoked electrical shocks to my legs and spine. To address this issue, I had to turn off the device, which is powered by a rechargeable battery and controlled remotely, and undergo repeated reprogramming by medical professionals who noted its erratic behavior. Concurrently, I experienced a series of concussions, some resulting from falling while medicated for chronic pain and others from my own reckless behavior, such as attempting a handstand during yoga, spinning on a pirouette during an advanced ballet class, and attempting twerking, which left a temporary indentation in my forehead. Although I possess a thick skull and a hard head, I have also experienced lightning strikes. In first grade, I composed an uncannily prophetic poem that began with the line \"I wish I were electrified\" during a school-wide speech competition. Three years later, during a rare SoCal storm, I survived electrocution after sticking tweezers into a socket in my childhood family room, with the resulting surge throwing me across the room and causing the power to go out in my house. I recounted these stories to a friend at brunch, who claimed they could not find any direct evidence of my experience, but they acknowledged that electricity tends to draw more electricity. This anecdote led me to discover sliders, individuals who believe themselves to be conduits for electricity, and an array of accounts of inexplicable lightning-related occurrences. One such case from Illinois, documented in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries from 1997, involved ten members of the Olesen family being struck by lightning between 1899 and 1966. Another notable example is Melvyn Roberts from South Carolina, who claimed to have been struck by lightning eleven times, the most of any person I encountered in my research. The interplay between physical and emotional traumas in shaping this character is a central theme in the novel.",
  "summary": "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",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}