The Five Wounds

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



Winner of The Center for Fiction's 2021 First Novel Prize 'A gorgeously written, Franzen-calibre tale' O Magazine In this vivid, darkly funny and beautifully rendered debut novel, Kirstin Valdez Quade brings to life the struggles of five generations of the Padilla family. Amadeo, struggling to stay off the bottle, Angel, his pregnant fifteen-year-old daughter, Yolanda, the family matriarch, reeling from a recent discovery, Angel's mother, who Angel isn't speaking to and Tío Tive, keeper of the family's history. But amid the challenges they face individually and together, it is Connor, Angel's baby, who might just be the one to save the family from themselves.