THE FIVE WOUNDS

“Quade's masterly novel (following her 2015 debut story collection, “Night at the Fiestas”) revolves around one family living in the fictional Las Penas, a small, decaying town in northern New Mexico where “anything that needs doing can be done better elsewhere.” Unfolding over the course of a year, beginning and ending on Good Friday, the story follows the ailing matriarch Yolanda Padilla, her 33-year-old son, Amadeo, and his teenage daughter, Angel, who returns to their lives in the opening pages after more than a year of living with her mother. She's eight months pregnant 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 all three.” —The New York Times Book Review “The village of Las Penas may be fictional, but the problems its Latinx families experience are all too real [THE FIVE WOUNDS] ticks along with a strong sense of horrible inevitability – every poor decision excavated and made very real. You are utterly within these characters, and within their world – dreaming of a better life, just as they do THE FIVE WOUNDS turns into a propulsive, immersive story that reckons wisely with the real cost of redemption.” —The Guardian “Amadeo Padilla is playing Jesus in a Good Friday procession, and he takes the role so seriously, he winds up in an emergency room in his town of Las Penas, N.M., with wounds from nails. What follows is a year of real-life drama, much of it sharply funny, too, in the life of Amadeo, Angel, his 15-year-old daughter who's about to give birth, a cast of characters who share each other's lives whether they like it or not.” —National Public Radio “The short stories of Kirstin Valdez Quade, several of which The New York Times anointed ‘legitimate masterpieces,' earned her a royal flush of awards — from the National Book Critics Circle, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the National Book Foundation and others. THE FIVE WOUNDS, Quade's debut novel, deserves that kind of acclaim and more. Like her stories, the novel is sheathed in sensate layers of the Northern New Mexico landscape: rough, rocky, high-desert scrabble and sagebrush scrub; the scent of piñon burning in the horno, Lotaburgers oozing green chili grease onto plastic lace tablecloths, tortillas grilling on the comal. But the novel's driving force is its characters' raw longings — the personal and social unrest that simmers in the Land of Enchantment, home of the author's heart.” —Los Angeles Times “Kirstin Valdez Quade takes no half swings and refuses to write a character half-heartedly. Readers will love her characters for all their beauty and boils, and will find themselves captivated, frustrated, gutted, and hopeful for them as well. Weaving together painful personal and collective histories into this unforgettable family, THE FIVE WOUNDS is just as likely to break your heart as it is to make you break out laughing.” —Chicago Review of Books “[Quade's] sinewy sentences and emotional daring astound. . . . The Five Wounds is destined to be one of this year's most celebrated works of fiction.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “The acclaimed author of Nights at the Fiestas returns with a gorgeously written, Franzen-caliber tale of one Latinx family's via dolorosa. It's Holy Week in Las Penas, New Mexico, and the village maverick, Amadeo, is rehearsing to play Jesus in the village's passion play when his pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter shows up on his doorstep. Is an emotional resurrection in the cards?” —O Magazine

“The well-developed characters convey palpable emotion as Amadeo's failures as a father, partner, entrepreneur, and even as Jesus translate into fits of rage and frustration. Quade's rendering of a singular community is pitch perfect.” (starred review)

UK: Tuskar Rock; Italy: La nave di Teseo; Croatia: Petrine Knjige; NL: Mozaiek;

“I don't remember ever reading a novel as vibrant and warm as THE FIVE WOUNDS by Kirstin Valdez Quade. Just a few pages in, I felt like I intimately knew the characters, and cared about them as if they are family members. It's both heartbreaking and a joy to read!" — Lara Vapnyar

Selected by Barnes & Noble as a 2021 Book Club pick, and by Roxane Gay for the first year of her Audacious Book Club

"The characters in this engrossing novel are created in luminous and memorable detail. Just as the pacing is perfect, so too are the tact and care with which each scene is made. Kirstin Valdez Quade, by concentrating on the truth of small moments, has brought a whole world into focus." ? Colm Tóibín, author of House of Names "An unputdownable novel, The Five Wounds takes my breath away with its intimate, humorous, and heart-aching portrayal of a New Mexican family. Kirstin Valdez Quade can make a reader laugh and break a reader's heart in the same breath, and she leaves us, by the end of the novel, in awe of the dazzling power of her storytelling." ? Yiyun Li, author of Must I Go "Kirstin Valdez Quade writes with exquisite precision about the fragility and resilience of the Padilla family I loved The Five Wounds, which reminded me that growing pains are not confined to adolescence and that people can be newborn at any age. Even its most excruciating moments are charged with a luminous compassion." ? Karen Russell, author of Orange World and Other Stories "In this cruel and divisive era, Kirstin Valdez Quade has brought healing and regeneration with The Five Wounds. It is bracing and wise, and it breaks us in the best ways. Then builds us back up again. It should find many grateful readers." ? Luis Alberto Urrea, author of House of Broken Angels "With deep empathy, fierce intelligence, and subtle wit, Kirstin Valdez Quade has crafted an indelible portrait of a family living in precarity. The characters in The Five Wounds are so vivid, their grasping efforts toward love and redemption so finely wrought, and each page full of such immaculate prose, that I read this novel with ever-increasing breathless urgency." ? Phil Klay, author of Missionaries "The Five Wounds is brilliant! The story is bountiful and so incredibly well crafted?a beautiful braid of the life cycle within a family. It captures both the strength and fragility of relationships and existence and the resilience and great power of love and belief. It is a novel about faith in the largest sense of the word. Each page is packed with detail and the most beautiful language?and images and characters that will remain part of our lives." ? A. M. Homes, author of May We Be Forgiven "You hold in your hands a small, complete universe vibrating with joy and grief, humor and absurdity and delight. All the fabulous mess of humanity is, somehow, in these pages. The Five Wounds is bighearted, tender, wise, and shot through with moments of pure grace." ? C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold

Winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction for 2021

Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 by Oprah Magazine, The Week, The Millions, and Electric Lit.

“Quade follows up her John Leonard Prize–winning debut collection, NIGHT AT THE FIESTAS, by expanding on perhaps its best story Expertly crafted, this story of family and community introduces us to often needy characters for whom readers come to care deeply. Highly recommended.” (starred review)