The release date for the English version of 'The Five Wounds' by
Kirstin Valdez Quade is Jan 2022. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
In the sleepy New Mexico community of Las Penas, during Holy Week, thirty-three-year-old jobless Amadeo Padilla has been assigned to the role of Jesus for the Good Friday procession. His preparations for personal salvation are disrupted when his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up pregnant on his doorstep as he is busily preparing for this part. Tough, vivacious Angel has left her mother's home with only weeks before her due date, embarking on a drastically different course for her life.
The Five Wounds, vivid, compassionate, humorous, and masterfully depicted, follows the baby's first year of life as five generations of the Padilla family come together: Yolanda, the mother of Amadeo, is reeling from a recent finding; Angel isn't speaking to Marissa, Angel's mother; and Tíve, Yolanda's uncle and the family historian, isn't fond of Tíve. Every one of them has expectations that Amadeo, who often drinks beer to decompress, doesn't believe he can meet.
The writer whose tales have been praised as "legitimate masterpieces" (New York Times) has produced a remarkable first book with The Five Wounds. Long after the last page is turned, readers will still be thinking about the characters created by Kirstin Valdez Quade and their hardships as parents of kids they may not be able to rescue.