Five Wives

By Joan Thomas,

Book cover of Five Wives

Book description

WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR FICTION

A GLOBE AND MAIL, CBC BOOKS, APPLE BOOKS, AND NOW TORONTO BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

In the tradition of The Poisonwood Bible and State of Wonder, a novel set in the rainforest of Ecuador about five women left behind when…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Five Wives as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I grew up with the true story of the missionaries to an isolated Indigenous tribe in Ecuador who, in 1956, were killed by the people they’d come to help. I loved Five Wives because it’s an incisive but compassionate interrogation of a story from my own religious background, but you don’t need to be familiar with the source material to find it riveting. 

As a religiously fervent teen, I was inspired by the courage of the wives of these martyred men, who later returned to bring the gospel to their husbands’ murderers. As an ex-Christian adult, I was awed by…

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