Name: The Five Wounds
ISBN: 9781324020219

Kirstin Valdez Quade

Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 by Oprah Magazine, The Week, The Millions, and Electric Lit.From an award-winning storyteller comes a stunning debut novel about a New Mexican family's extraordinary year of love and sacrifice.

A Novel

The Five Wounds

Kristen Claiborn

I feel like I get irrationally excited when I come across a book set in New Mexico…hell even if it only slightly mentions New Mexico, I get giddy. This book was the February selection of Library Reads, and since I get on my library’s website daily, I checked it out. If you haven’t discovered free ebooks from your library, you’re truly missing out. They’re free, downloadable to Kindle or Libby, and you don’t have to remember to return the darn thing. The download just goes away when the loan is up. Did I mention it’s free? The Library Reads book is always universally available for the month, so I didn’t have to put a hold on it and wait (it bothers my husband that we have to “wait” for digital copies of books, he doesn’t get it). And when I discovered it was set in Northern New Mexico, a place with which I am quite familiar, I was ecstatic. 
	This book paints a compelling picture of generational cycles. Angel is a pregnant 15-year-old, the daughter of another teen mother. Angel’s father, Amadeo, is an alcoholic, the son of another addict. The community it centers around is known to have a heroin problem and riddled with poverty, compounding the family’s problems. Both Angel and Amadeo want to be “good” so badly, but feel like they constantly fall short. While not everybody grew up with addicts as parents, or teen moms, or both, everybody can understand the feelings of inadequacy that come from being a parent, or even just disappointing your parents. Quade makes it quite easy to empathize with each of these characters, even as we can identify their shortcomings. 
	It fell short of the fifth star because it felt more like a snippet of their lives more than a full-blown story, but that’s just my opinion. I like a clear conflict, and this one just doesn’t have it. There are many small, internal conflicts, but not one BIG one that is cohesively resolved. Not much of the little conflicts felt resolved either, the book just, kinda, ended. It’s more of a “year-in-the-life” It’s still very good, however, despite my own issues with the individual characters’ conflicts.

The Five Wounds A Novel

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