The Five Wounds
A Novel
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5.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
A stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family's extraordinary year of love and sacrifice—"A wholehearted, radiant, and darkly funny exploration of family, faith, and forgiveness" (Buzzfeed).
Winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
Winner of the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award
Finalist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award
"Masterly . . . Quade has created a world bristling with compassion and humanity. The characters and the challenges they face are wholly realized and moving; their journeys span a wide spectrum of emotion and it is impossible not to root for [them]." —Alexandra Chang, New York Times Book Review
It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, when his fifteen-year-old Angel shows up pregnant on her father Amadeo's doorstep and disrupts his plans for personal redemption. Over the baby's first year, five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo's mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discover; Angle's mother, Marissa, whom Angel isn't speaking to; and disapproving Tio Tive, keeper of the family's history." "Sheathed in sensate layers of the Northern New Mexico landscape" (Meredith Maran, Los Angeles Times), The Five Wounds is "a propulsive, immersive story that reckons wisely with the real cost of redemption" (Holly Williams, Guardian).
One of NPR's Best Books of the Year • A Publishers Weekly and Library Journal Best Book of the Year in Fiction • A Kirkus Reviews Best Fictional Family of the Year • A Booklist Top Ten Book-Group Book of the Year and Top Twenty-First Century First Novels, So Far • A Goodreads Choice Awards Best Debut Novel Nominee
Customer Reviews
Worth the Pain
Reading The Five Wounds is a bit like watching someone learn to ride a bike. You know the rider is capable, can see where she is going, can stop if she needs to, but the road she has chosen to ride on is so perilous, filled with potholes, unseen roots and rocks, and with other unreliable riders, making the experience one filled with hope she will just not crash.
But crashes are an inevitable part of learning, and essential to the experience of learning from life that pain and love totter in balance with each other.
This beautiful book, at once mired in suffering and still managing to lift us into hope, takes us on a trying journey of dysfunctional relationships, struggles to cope with addictions, and the imperfect attempts of families to love and support each other. It will break your heart then heal its wounds.