The Five Wounds

A Novel

By: Kirstin Valdez Quade

Narrated by: Gary Tiedemann

It's Holy Week in the small town of Las Penas, New Mexico, and 33-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 15-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 mother's house, setting her life on a startling new path.

Vivid, tender, 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, Marissa, whom Angel isn't speaking to; and disapproving Tive, Yolanda's uncle and keeper of the family's history. Each brings expectations that Amadeo doesn't 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 book's conclusion, bringing to life their struggles to parent children they may not be equipped to save.

©2021 Kirstin Valdez Quade (P)2021 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A beautiful tribute Northern New Mexico!

Eeeee! I loved every minute of this audiobook. As a nurse both at Espanola Presbyterian and St. Vincent’s in Santa Fe ten years ago, I was struck by the feeling that this could have been any one of my young patients. The beauty and tragedy of the region is so artistically written. The instant affection for all of the characters is unmatched in any recent novel. This made me not only miss the Norteños of Northern New Mexico, but also the landscape, smells, foods, but mostly it’s fierce dedication to family. I will continue to recommend and read again. Thank you to the author for such a magical presentation!

The Inner Dialogues Bring Depth to the Human Condi

Valdez Quade's skill at developing characters through not only their actions, but their thought filled reactions, as well as those around them says so much about the human condition and what is not said in our relationships. The author communicates such a strong, sense of place and culture. I was in the small New Mexico town with the characters and while their circumstances could not be more differen than mine, their challenges, their values, their joy in family are universal. We make so many choices in life, yet the big choices we make are what we choose to think about them. We see and hopefully understand the roots of how we come to thinking in such different ways about an event, such as a teenage pregnancy.

The thoughtful reader will look beyong this wonderful narrative and think about their own choices, reactions and thoughts. I know I do.

Excellent

I really enjoyed this book. I felt like I fully knew the family as the characters were well-developed and realistic. Great pace, narration, and storytelling!

Kirstin Valdez Quade, one of the greats

In my humble opinion, ‘The Five Wounds’ (2021), announces Kirstin Valdez Quade as one of the good if not wholly exceptionally gifted and graceful Catholic and humanist novelists.

Great book. Complex Characters

This was a great book. I wanted to hate the characters because they were so real and so flawed, but like our own loved ones and friends I wound up with love for them. A truly well written book. I look forward to more from this author. Narrator was great as well.

Brilliant and Deep Story!!!

This book was extraordinary!!! I loved every word and each character. Based on a small extended family near Espanola, New Mexico. Brilliant!!! This author truly channeled each character in detail with pure genius and depth. Narration by Gary Tiedmann is pitch perfect ~ great feeling for each and every character. I am surprised that this book hasn't risen up on Audible ~ considering how much cookie cutter books are popular. I have listened several hundred books ~ I would put this in my top 10. Give it a try, stick with it, you will be rewarded. Kirstin Valdez Quade is incredible!!!

Incredible writing

One of the best books I’ve read in a long time. Powerful writing about family and trauma and the choices we make to change the course of our history.

Five Wounds

Hard story to read., The characters were amazingly resilient but I found myself getting anxious as they kept making what I would consider bad decisions. Asi la vida es.

The narrative is very negative. Small moments of joy, and a long tail of desperation.

Only the last couple of chapters Realee had elation, just a constant narrative of desperation

Kind of depressing.

We chose this for our book club book. And I found the storyline and the characters to be desperate and predictable.