The Five Wounds

From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican familys extraordinary year of love and sacrifice.

Its 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 for personal redemption. With weeks to go until her due date, tough, ebullient Angel has fled her mothers house, setting her life on a startling new path.

Vivid, tender, funny, and beautifully rendered, The Five Wounds spans the babys first year as five generations of the Padilla family converge: Amadeos mother, Yolanda, reeling from a recent discovery; Angels mother, Marissa, whom Angel isnt speaking to; and disapproving Tve, Yolandas uncle and keeper of the familys history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo, who often solves his problems with a beer in his hand, doesnt think he can live up to.

The Five Wounds is a miraculous debut novel from a writer whose stories have been hailed as legitimate masterpieces (New York Times). 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.

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circles John Leonard Prize. She is the recipient of a 5 Under 35 award from the National Book Foundation, the Rome Prize, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Originally from New Mexico, she now lives in New Jersey and teaches at Princeton University.

• Publisher:W. W. Norton & Company (April 6, 2021)
• Language:English
• Hardcover:448 pages
• ISBN-10:0393242838
• ISBN-13:9780393242836
• Item Weight:1.74 pounds
• UNSPSC:55101500
• Dimensions:6 x 9 inches