Don’t you love it when a book completely guts you, takes your heart, and twists it so that your breath is in your throat, and you have to skim a few sentences ahead to make sure what you think is going to happen doesn’t happen? And then, in the end, you get a light little butterfly kiss on the cheek and dare to feel hopeful that the characters are going to be just OK?

If your answer is “yes,” then you need to pick up a copy of The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade and have your heart stopped, skipped, and pounded.

In the opening pages of this 416-page family saga set in Las Penas, New Mexico, we meet Amadeo Padilla. A self-centered, immature, thirty-three-year-old man who lives rent-free with his mom, Yolanda. Amadeo has struggled his entire life to do, well, anything successfully. He’s the kind of guy no one believes because he never reasonably
follows through unless it involves alcohol. But, he’s on a quest for redemption. What better way to do that than to be crucified on Easter Sunday? However, his quest to commit to his role as Jesus during Holy Week is thwarted by his sixteen-year-old daughter, Angel, showing up eight months pregnant and ready to move in.

No one takes Amadeo seriously, including Angel. At just sixteen, she’s sharp and quick-witted, always managing to put Amadeo in his place with the truth. But, when it comes to his post-crucifixion, Angel isn’t saddened or worried about her father’s bleeding palms — she’s upset that he didn’t even consider how he would be able to hold her baby once he’s born.

The characterization is phenomenal. Valdez Quade does an exceptional job of showing each character’s flaws without plainly telling us that Amadeo is selfish, that Angel is desperate for an ounce of compassion, and that Yolanda is on the brink of despair.

Diagnosed with a glioblastoma during a trip to Las Vegas, Yolanda decides to hide this tragic truth from her family, just as she hid the root of their father’s drug addiction from her children, Amadeo and Valerie. Yolanda’s inner life left me feeling gutted. It seemed she contained multitudes muted by the death of her husband and the ambitions and lack thereof of her now-adult children. Yet, she was a fixture to them in the worst way.

Following an incident with her mother’s boyfriend, Angel feels alienated by her mother and is desperate to get away from her. Angel arrives at Yolanda’s house after her mom Marissa drops her off one evening. Angel hoped that her grandmother would be there to welcome her, but it’s her dad who gives her an ambivalent greeting. Angel is attending Smart Starts, a program designed to help teenage mothers navigate pregnancy, care for their newborns, and continue their education. Angel is infatuated with her instructor, Brianna, a twenty-five-year-old lonely virgin with a white savior complex. Brianna leads lessons on the importance of early childhood literacy and setting boundaries and goals for themselves. But it’s Lizette, another girl in her class, that Angel is eventually drawn to, which helps her discover a part of herself she hadn’t considered before, but unfortunately, Lizette’s trauma prevents her from forming a deep connection with Angel.

I didn’t think it was possible to feel another heartache on top of another heartbreak. But there’s a significant moment in the last 100 pages that had my pulse pounding in my neck and my breath caught in my throat. A moment that for Amadeo is life-changing, and though some readers may find it too clean of a turnaround for the Padillas, I found it a source of hope. It isn’t, as one reader put it, an “unrealistically happy ending.” Instead, to me, it ends purposefully hopeful, but still on shaky ground.

Nothing is neatly wrapped up; there are still so many uncertainties for the characters, much like real life.