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Read this if: You're searching for a new badass woman in history to admire.  Credit: @vanessarileyauthor Island Queen by Vanessa Riley
 Credit: W. W. Norton Company, Holly Andres Kirsten Valdez Quade's novel, The Five Wounds, was the BuzzFeed Book Club's pick last month. Following up on our discussion, we sent Valdez Quade some questions via email about her inspiration, writing process, and what's next for her.
What inspired this story and why were you drawn to writing it?
Kirsten Valdez Quade: I am always drawn to writing about families in my fiction—members of our family know us so well, but in the very specific context of the family. There's a shared history and a shared language. They know how to wound us and love us and drive us crazy. I am so interested in how, say, five members of a family can experience a single event in five completely different ways, how each person creates their own distinct story about that event. And inevitably, some of these stories will come into conflict with one another.
What was the most rewarding part of creating the novel?
KVQ: Probably the most rewarding part was getting to spend time, if only imaginatively, in this place that I love! I spend most of my time longing to be back in New Mexico, and so I return there often in my fiction. I also take real pleasure in getting to know my characters. When I begin a project, they are mysterious to me, and part of what propels me forward is discovering who they are.
From our book club readers: Did you grow up with a religious upbringing?
KVQ: My religious education was a bit haphazard. My very devout great-grandmother and grandmother took care of me when I was a child, so prayers and processions and candles on the altar were very much a part of my life. I went to mass and Sunday school with my mother regularly for a swath of my childhood, until we moved and that petered out, and I briefly attended Catholic school in Santa Fe.
My parents read me the lives of the saints and stories from my children's Bible, and they also read me Greek and Norse myths. My father is a geologist, so I also had a pretty solid understanding of evolution and faith in the fossil record. I had a poster of various early man on my wall.
From our book club readers: What kind of character archetype are Brianna and Marisa? Is Brianna meant to be a villain?
KVQ: Oh, I don't think of Brianna as a villain at all. This is her first job out of college. She's very young and idealistic, and completely out of her depth. She makes some terrible mistakes and she does succumb to her worst impulses, but she wants to do better. She cares about these girls, and does help them in some very real ways, despite her mistakes. I think these mistakes will probably stay with her the rest of her life, and she will use the memory of them to make better choices.
Marissa, too, shouldered a great deal of responsibility from a very young age, and she has done her best as a single mother with very little support. I do think, in her most selfish moments, she rankles against the responsibility and longs to pursue the dreams she had before she became a parent so young. But I also think she raised Angel with a lot of love and laughter and Angel will use much of what Marissa gave her in her own mothering of Connor.
How did you choose the title — did it change at all during the process?
KVQ: The novel grew out of a short story called "The Five Wounds" that was published in my collection, Night at the Fiestas. When I decided to revisit the characters and explore their situation more deeply, I assumed a new title would emerge for the novel. I tried on many titles, but the only one that truly felt right for the novel was The Five Wounds.
The title refers most literally to the five wounds that Christ suffered on the cross, but I intended it to evoke the wounds that every character in the novel carries: the wounds of history and family history, wounds self-inflicted and caused by others. And on the other side of woundedness is healing, which is, as I see it, the true subject of my book.
How have you been navigating the response to the novel? Are you at all surprised by the impact?
KVQ: I've been so delighted that it was chosen for the BuzzFeed Book Club and various others. I've been a member of a few book clubs, and I love reading and discussing books in company—it always deepens my experience of the book. It makes me happy to think of people reading and talking about my novel. These characters have been inside me for so many years, and I'm so happy that they're in the world now.
What's next for you?
KVQ: I've been writing stories and essays lately, and have been circling around a new novel idea! More From BuzzFeed
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