The Five Wounds (Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition)

by Kirstin Valdez Quade

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Kirstin Valdez Quade proves she is a masterful storyteller in her debut novel, The Five Wounds. Set in a small town in New Mexico, readers will meet five generations of the Padilla family amid life-changing circumstances. This is an unputdownable story of deep family bonds, redemption and love, with characters so real that they will stay with readers long after the story ends.

This Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition includes a note from the author that explains the book's genesis and a reading group guide.

From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel following a New Mexican family’s extraordinary year of love and sacrifice.

It’s Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo Padilla has been given the part of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. He is preparing feverishly for this role when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep and disrupts his plans. Their reunion sets her own life down a startling path.

Vivid, tender, darkly funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the baby’s first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeo’s mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angel’s mother, whom Angel isn’t speaking to; and disapproving Tío Tíve, keeper of the family’s history. In the absorbing, realist tradition of Elizabeth Strout and Jonathan Franzen, Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that will linger long after the final page, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393881509
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/30/2021
Edition description:	Barnes & Noble Book Club Edition
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	7,593
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. The recipient of a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation, she teaches at Princeton University.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/01/2020

DEBUT NOVEL Quade follows up her John Leonard Prize-winning debut collection, Night of the Fiestas, by expanding on perhaps its best story. In Las Penas, NM, 33-year-old hard-drinking, going-nowhere Amadeo unexpectedly plays the part of Jesus in the town's surprisingly realistic portrayal of the Passion of Christ during Holy Week. Just as unexpectedly, his pregnant, near-16-year-old daughter Angel, fed up with her own mother, drops in to live with him and his mother, Yolanda. What results is a profoundly affecting story that smoothly expands to include the lives of family, friends, and the entire community of hardscrabble Las Penas. Yolanda, who has tended to her whole troubled family, now has issues of her own, while her smug, crusading daughter Valerie, with two interestingly contrary daughters of her own, makes trouble for Amadeo and Angel. Owing to her pregnancy, Angel attends special classes, where she develops complex relationships with sexually charged student Lizette and the emotionally imprisoned and ultimately obstructionist teacher, Brianna. The baby's arrival brings joy and a moment of supreme, heartrending panic as the narrative reaches its graceful conclusion. VERDICT Expertly crafted, this story of family and community introduces us to often needy characters for whom readers come to care deeply. Highly recommended.—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal