The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers
A Novel
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
BONUS: This edition contains a The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers discussion guide.
In award-winning author Thomas Mullen’s evocative and spirited novel, we follow the Depression-era adventures of Jason and Whit Fireson—bank robbers known as the Firefly Brothers by an adoring public that worships their acts as heroic counterpunches thrown at a broken system. Late one night in August 1934, following a yearlong crime spree across the Midwest, the Firefly Brothers are forced into a police shootout and die in a hail of bullets. Or do they? Jason and Whit’s girlfriends—Darcy, a wealthy socialite, and Veronica, a hardened survivor—struggle between grief and an unyielding belief that the Firesons are alive. 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 to make sense of a world in which all has come unmoored.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Mullen's compelling second novel, set during the heyday of J. Edgar Hoover's war on crime in the 1930s, violent bank robbers Jason and Whit Fireson (aka the Firefly Brothers) wake up in an Indiana morgue, having miraculously survived bullet wounds that led the authorities to triumphantly announce their deaths. The pair escape and inform the third Fireson brother, Weston, and their mother, that they're alive. Meanwhile, the embarrassed local police report that ghouls stole Jason and Whit's corpses. This is but the first of a number of fantastic episodes in which the criminals cheat death, with no logical explanation. Despite the surrealism, Mullen (The Last Town on Earth) makes the despair of the Great Depression palpable, as his antiheroes become folk icons to the downtrodden people of the Midwest resentful of a government that can't help them. Readers comfortable with significant narrative ambiguities will be engrossed.
Customer Reviews
100 Words or Less
I dove into this book because it seemed such an interesting plot. I was curious to how those “many deaths” would be explained.
Turns out they’re not explained at all … not really. Well, not in the first 40 pages or so. I supposed it was my expectations that disappointed me. I wanted something mysterious. Something really clever. Instead I get clumsy “We’re dead; we’re alive again” gimmick that seemed pointless.