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A Novel
Late one night in August 1934, following a yearlong spree of
bank robberies across the Midwest, the Firefly Brothers are forced into a police
shootout and die ...for the first time.
In award-winning author Thomas Mullen's evocative new novel, the highly
anticipated follow-up to his acclaimed debut, The Last Town on Earth, we
follow the Depression-era adventures of Jason and Whit Fireson—bank robbers
known as the Firefly Brothers by the press, the authorities, and an adoring
public that worships their acts as heroic counterpunches thrown at a broken
system.
Now it appears they have at last met their end in a hail of bullets. Jason and
Whit's lovers—Darcy, a wealthy socialite, and Veronica, a hardened
survivor—struggle between grief and an unyielding belief that the Firesons have
survived. While they and the Firesons' stunned mother and straight-arrow third
son wade through conflicting police reports and press accounts, wild rumors
spread that the bandits are still at large. Through it all, the Firefly Brothers
remain as charismatic, unflappable, and as mythical as the American Dream
itself, racing to find the women they love and make sense of a world in which
all has come unmoored.
Complete with kidnappings and gangsters, heiresses and speakeasies, The Many
Deaths of the Firefly Brothers is an imaginative and spirited saga about
what happens when you are hopelessly outgunned—and a masterly tale of hardship,
redemption, and love that transcends death.
"Starred Review. Readers comfortable with significant narrative ambiguities will be engrossed." - Publishers Weekly
"Fanciful trimmings can't disguise Mullen's failure to fully penetrate a vanished world." - Kirkus Reviews
"The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers is a
rollicking and smart novel—mythic, mysterious and utterly compelling. Thomas
Mullen shows us ourselves in his speculative historical fiction, and for readers
who love great stories told beautifully, his books can't come fast enough." -
Jess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets
"The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers is an ambitious and big-hearted
book, as lively and full of surprises as the Brothers themselves. The
Depression-era world that Mullen conjures in its pages is satisfyingly real-and
startlingly reminiscent of the America we inhabit today."—Jon Clinch, author of
Finn
"Thomas Mullen's obvious intelligence and soaring imagination have come together
to create this remarkable mythic tale. The Many Deaths of the Firefly
Brothers is a story that reminds us that adventure, heroism, magic, and love
can survive—and, in fact, thrive—in times of economic collapse and harrowing
social uncertainty." -Dean Bakopoulos, author of Please Don't Come Back from
the Moon
"If there's any justice in the world, Thomas Mullen's searing, thrilling novel
will have as many lives as the Firefly Brothers. It's a thoughtful exploration
of celebrity worship and the border country between lore and despair; it's also
a crackling good yarn that never loses its getaway-car momentum. This is
gangster fiction for grownups—from a writer who brings history vividly and
bruisingly to life." - Louis Bayard, author of The Black Tower
"Fast-talking gents with gats, swell dames falling for the wrong fellas, car
chases and hideouts in a depression-era America desperate for a new Robin Hood,
this novel has the goods. In The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers,
Thomas Mullen puts a magical twist on a classic tale to give us just the right
book for hard times. Read this book, see." - Keith Donahue, author of The
Stolen Child
This information about The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Thomas Mullen is the internationally bestselling author of several previous novels, including Darktown, an NPR Best Book of 2016, which was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Southern Book Prize, the Indies Choice Book Award, and was nominated for or won prizes in France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The follow-up, Lightning Men, was named one of the Top Ten Crime Novels of 2017 by The New York Times and was shortlisted for a CWA Dagger Award. His debut, The Last Town on Earth, set during the 1918 flu pandemic, was named Best Debut Novel of 2006 by USA Today and was awarded the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for excellence in historical fiction. He lives in Atlanta.
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