This is something very different from what I normally read, but it kept me completely hooked. The story is based on a true life missionary trip to Ecuador, where 5 families decide to go and 'convert' the people who live there. The husbands go into a zone they've been banned from, and don't make it out again. This is the story of the women and children left behind. Not an easy read but a captivating one none the less. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the chance to read it.

I enjoyed reading this book. It had a good story to it. I liked the variety of characters in it. It is my first book read by this author. I hope to read more books by this author.

I hugely enjoyed reading Five Wives. The historical characters had great depth, interesting back stories and relatable struggles (or not) with their faith. The narrative had good pace and built up well to the dramatic events involving the menfolk.
The description suggests there will be more about "what the women did next" than there actually was, but this didn't detract for me. The females all have their own paths both before and after.

I felt the author was particularly insightful and respectful surrounding Christian beliefs. If you are a believer there's plenty of angles to identify with and the author does a great job here both throwing the light onto faith and also holding it up to scrutiny. So if you’re not a believer the introspection is also fascinating and entertaining even.

I connected much less with the modern-day characters and felt there was less depth in these sections - hence 4 stars here and not 5. However, it’s definitely recommended.

This book which was based on a true story, revolves around the five missionary wives and their husbands who move to Ecuador to convert an Amazonian Waorani tribe that spear anyone who comes near their settlement. Written as fiction, this story shows the racist mindset of these Christian missionaries, the events leading up to the invasion and what followed.

To be completely honest, until about the half-way mark, I was a little bored and confused. There were so many characters and names thrown at me, all the different timelines, I was not enjoying it at all. The only thing keeping me wanting to finish it was the premise. It was so interesting and because we find out that the husbands die so early on, I was so interested to know what exactly happened that I forced myself to keep reading. Once I got to about the half-way point, I knew the characters well enough to keep up. Rachel and Marj’s chapters were my favourite to read. I loved seeing the story told through their perspective and then Betty’s towards the end.

The writing can be a little too descriptive and drawn out at times, but there are some beautifully worded scenes within. The themes of religion and invasion are so prominent (as this is based on true events) that I was completely drawn into the story. I really felt for the Waorani people and was so angry at the missionaries and their attitude towards the Amazonian tribe. The author does a fantastic job at capturing their motivations and emotions throughout. I was very immersed in the story and often felt that I was with the women in Ecuador.
As a lover of languages, I also absolutely loved the clear communication barriers, miscommunications and translation obstacles faced by the characters. I think that was my favourite aspect of the story.

Overall, it was a good book and I’m glad I kept reading. Although to make reading easier at the beginning, I may have needed a family tree as a reference. That may have made the reading a little bit easier, especially whilst reading the present day through Abby and David. Trying to remember how everyone was related, who had children and who remarried was a bit difficult, especially at the beginning.

This book does a great job in retelling this story with the focus on the wives. I enjoyed much about it and once I was sucked into the story, I wanted to keep reading. I would love to read more about these events and the Waorani people in the future.
Thank you very much for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A big part missing from this book is the viewpoint of the Waodani people. I feel that it would have made a more complete picture of “Operation Auca.” As it is, Five Wives did not have the satisfying ending that I look for at the end of every novel.

Though part non-fiction and part fiction, I would have liked to see the sources that the author used to put some of the main characters in such an unflattering light, to put it mildly..

Joan Thomas is a talented writer, but this book was not for me.

Thank you, Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. This is my honest opinion.

The five wives are the spouses of evangelical missionaries in Ecuador. It is apparent fairly early on that their gospel was not met by willing ears and disaster strikes. The story is spread over two timeframes - during and in the years after the incident, and many years later as the son and grand daughter of the missionaries assess the impact on their lives.

I really enjoyed this book, there are hints of Barbara Kingsolver in the setting and the characters. Not being religious I always find it fascinating that people can be so sure about their beliefs that they can impose them on other people, even to the detriment of both parties.

A most enjoyable read!

As much as I wanted to like this book, I found parts of it pretty boring. I know that it was loosely based off of a true story, and that's what pulled me in to begin with. However, I found my mind drifting and not being interested.

This book just didn't do it for me. The blurb was misleading: "a novel set in the rainforest of Ecuador about five women left behind when their missionary husbands are killed"... the husbands are around for what feels like most of the book (okay, not "most", but certainly a large part), and the modern-day sections really wrecked it for me. The writing is good, and the idea has promise (it's based on true events), but it's a "no" from me. Sorry.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advance copy to review. This review is entirely my own, unbiased, opinion.

Such an engaging story by Joan Thomas.
The moment I read the blurb,I was sucked in,wanted to know more about the poor families of the people that entered the tribal people.

Beautifully written with wonderful prose. You'll wonder why you hadn't read it sooner.I absolutely loved this book and it was a different take on fiction than the books we usually read.

No wonder it is the recipient of the Governor General's literary award for fiction.Many thanks to HarperAvenue for providing me with an e-ARC of this book!!!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars
4.5/5 stars.

Not really big on stories with religion as it's base but this was surprisingly good because I was drawn in by the story of the women left behind to struggle on their own. Well written with strong characters. Definitely worth checking out. Happy reading!

Five Wives is based on true events as a group of Evangelists visit The Waorani people in Ecuador with the hope of converting them to Christianity.

The novel provides a good background to Operation Auca (named that as that's what the Waorani people are known locally), and deals well with showing the differing perspectives and threads of each individual missionary.

Something I struggled with was the fact that the novel is supposedly about the wives after the death of their husbands yet the husbands seem to stick around for the majority of the novel so I lost interest as the plot I thought I would be reading didn't materialise until over halfway.

Overall, I enjoyed the weaving of the different perspectives and the intentions of each missionary but at times it missed the mark for me. An enjoyable read but not one I would be desperate to reach for again.

This was not an easy novel and it certainly wasn't escape reading but it's one of the most profound novels I've read in a very long time. We're introduced to slices of experience from a variety of people in different times and places but all centered on the 5 missionaries who were killed during their attempt to bring Christianity to people from a remote community in Ecuador. The author brilliantly shows the arrogance of the missionaries' zeal and how those who seek to civilize are the ones in need of teaching. We see the effect "Operation Auca" has on the family of the missionaries, and this effect reverberates through generations. She also strips bare the devastation these earnest five wreak on the very community they think they're saving. And that devastation is like an atomic bomb, destroying everything deep and wide.

I love that Five Wives by Joan Thomas was based on true events, known as Operation Auca (Auca means savage). In the story, we go back and forth to see what happened in the past. Fascinating look at the couples as they set up homes and lives in Ecuador. The women followed their husbands, who believed they had a calling from God.

Here’s the background of the operation:

Operation Auca was an attempt by five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States to bring Christianity to the Huaorani people of the rain forest of Ecuador. The Huaorani, also known pejoratively as Aucas (a modification of awqa, the Quechua word for “savages”), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, against both their own people and outsiders who entered their territory. With the intention of being the first Christians to evangelize the previously uncontacted Huaorani, the missionaries began making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping gifts, which were reciprocated. After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 3, 1956, the missionaries established a camp at “Palm Beach”, a sandbar along the Curaray River, a few kilometers from Huaorani settlements. Their efforts came to an end on January 8, 1956, when all five—Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—were attacked and speared by a group of Huaorani warriors. The news of their deaths was broadcast around the world, and Life magazine covered the event with a photo essay.

The deaths of the men galvanized the missionary effort in the United States, sparking an outpouring of funding for evangelization efforts around the world. Their work is still frequently remembered in evangelical publications, and in 2006 was the subject of the film production End of the Spear. Several years after the death of the men, the widow of Jim Elliot, Elisabeth, and the sister of Nate Saint, Rachel, returned to Ecuador as missionaries with the Summer Institute of Linguistics (now SIL International) to live among the Huaorani. This eventually led to the conversion of many, including some of those involved in the killing. While exposing the tribe to increased influence from the outside, their efforts largely eliminated tribal violence.

Keep reading about it here.

More about the book:

In 1956, a small group of evangelical Christian missionaries and their families journeyed to the rainforest in Ecuador intending to convert the Waorani, a people who had never had contact with the outside world. The plan was known as Operation Auca. After spending days dropping gifts from an aircraft, the five men in the party rashly entered the “intangible zone.” They were all killed, leaving their wives and children to fend for themselves.

Five Wives is the fictionalized account of the real-life women who were left behind, and their struggles – with grief, with doubt, and with each other – as they continued to pursue their evangelical mission in the face of the explosion of fame that followed their husbands’ deaths.



This is out now. You can get it by going here!

This book was an extremely powerful read for me as a granddaughter of 1950s missionaries with similar passions--and a similarly destructive presence in the country in which they "served." I have long struggled with my family's legacy of seeking to convert and assimilate another people (in our case, Indonesians), and fully resonated with a lot of Abby's thoughts, and the distance she felt from her father (my mother was equally religious and a fervent believer in the work her parents had done, long seeking to follow in their footsteps), as well as her hesitant and almost morbid curiosity about the mission. This novel touched on so many troubling aspects of 1950's missionary culture that I've seen in my family and my childhood church, and I personally would have loved to see Abby's character and conflict more developed, but I recognize that may not be the reason the average reader picks up this book, and I truly respect the author's reluctance to write about living people, however fictionalized.

Operation Auca was a dinner table topic in my family for many years, and yet I learned a lot about the facts of the mission from reading this book--details my mother and grandparents never would have found it polite to discuss. It was clearly exceptionally well-researched. I appreciated exploring the different lenses that each of the wives, as well as Nate's sister Rachel, brought to the work. I loved reading about their relationships with each other and their feelings about being in the country, and how they navigated their relationship with God both before and after the death of their husbands.

Despite the ostensible focus on the wives, much of this narrative was about the husbands, just through their wives' eyes. And the woman you get to know the best is not a wife at all, but Nate's sister. Some wives, particularly Marilou, you learn little to nothing about. I would have liked to hear more about Betty and Rachel's experiences living with the Waorani later on; Marj's experience establishing the school and remarrying and moving to Quito; Olive's experiences navigating life upon her return to the United States, particularly given the denominational differences between her and the other women, etc. While it didn't quite end, the story definitely started winding down and ending when the men died. Even a brief epilogue for each woman would have made a great deal of difference to me. But I did enjoy the book tremendously and thank Ms. Thomas for her work in bringing this story to new life and teasing out explicit controversy.

Much, much appreciation to NetGalley and HarperCollins for the eARC in exchange for the review.

This is a true story of five wives. The widowed wives of five missionary husbands. The husband's were going on a mission to Ecuador to teach a tribe that had never been outside the rainforest. All five men were killed. The wives are left on their own with children to raise. That and they are trying to be faithful to their evangelical religion.
Insightful, emotional, compelling.

This is a very deep thinking book that takes time to digest.

It's based on the true story of Operation Auca, which I say that I haven't heard of

Without giving anything away, it tells the story of what happened to the missionaries and flipping forward to the present day.

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for ARC. Opinions are my own.

I'd not heard of Operation Auca. before reading this interesting novel that blends fact and fiction. Thomas has explored what happened to the women left behind after the murder of their husbands in Ecuador, a completely unfamiliar and hostile environment. The story moves between the time before the group set out to do missionary work to the time after the killings to the more or less present day when Abby explores her family history. There's a fair amount of philosophizing combined with the gritty realism of living in the jungle. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Not a quick read- it is thought provoking.

The novel is based on Operation Auca, group of missionaries crosses paths with a group of indigenous people living in Ecuador to try to introduce them to Christianity. As it was written by a Canadian who won the Governor General’s literary award I was intrigrued to dive into it. While Joan Thomas is a masterful story-teller, I could not identify with or relate to any particular character as the story doesn't focus on a particular character for any extended period of the book. However, it creatively weaves this historical fiction tale with skillful structure, narrative, and tight format to result in a very condusive, enjoyable experience. I can't wait to see what is to come from this author.

I love true crime and thriller stories, and I'm an experienced traveler, so the blurb of this novel sounded like it was going to be right up my alley. This novel in a fictionalized account of a true story. It's 1956, a group of Christian missionaries in Ecuador get killed in a no-enter zone, so their wives and children are left to themselves to survive and continue the mission. I mean, ARE YOU SERIOUS?!

The narrative, however, is about much more than these struggles. In fact, the narrative jumps back and forth between the 1950's and present day, so we also learn about how some of the couples got together, as well as what happened afterwards. To be honest, from the blurb alone I was expecting more or less a historical thriller, but I was wrong; it's a tale of love and loss, sense of purpose and life as a missionary, racism and classism. However, even though it's not a thriller, there were some very good twists and turns which made this book really exciting for me,

The writing itself is engaging, and I feel it really gives a good portrayal of an Evangelic mission back when people living traditionally were seen as totally backward.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Like many works of historical fiction, Five Wives by Joan Thomas takes a real event and colors in the details that the historical record doesn’t have. Five Wives does something else, too. In addition to bringing deceased people back to life, Thomas also has to contend with the legend that has sprung up around Operation Auca, a Christian mission to the Huaorani who live in the Ecuadorean Amazon. The mission is considered a success by the church organization that sponsored it, which means that uncomfortable details and human frailty are glossed over so that listeners can focus on the glory of god. The fact that five of the missionaries are murdered by the Huaorani just makes this story even more an illustration of god’s will to the evangelical Christians. Thomas works in between grim reality and ecstatic legend to create a deeply human story of pride, doubt, and cultural destruction.

In the afterword, Thomas reveals which of her characters are fiction and which are fictional representation of historical people. The generation that launched the mission are mostly historical; their descendants are mostly fictional. Five Wives spans three generations to tell the long tale of Operation Auca, from its inception in the brains of a group of evangelical Christians to the present day. Most of the novel centers on Elisabeth Elliot, her son David, and her granddaughter Abby. The novel opens with Elisabeth’s funeral. Like the stories that are told later, Elisabeth’s funeral is full of stories about the great woman. Everyone has their own perception of her. Some view her as a hero of their religion. Her son sees her as the impossible role model he has to live up to. Her granddaughter sees her as an aloof representation of a religion that Abby is beginning to turn against.

From that microcosm of Five Wives, we travel back in time (with brief glimpses in the novel’s present) to the early fifties as the five couples that later created Operation Auca make their way further and further into the Amazon. Initially, the mission was to the Quechua. The missionaries take up residence in a settlement created and abandoned by Shell Oil (who bailed out when it became too expensive and dangerous to prospect for oil there). The Quechua warn the missionaries about the Huaorani. (Auca is a derogatory name for the Huaorani that was commonly used in the twentieth century.) The Huaorani are an uncontacted group who, until the missionaries arrive, live according to their own ways, defending themselves with lances and poison. The semi-official leaders of the operation, Nate Saint and his sister, Rachel, are determined to convert the Huaorani—whether or not the Huaorani want to convert.

The way that the Saints and the rest of the missionaries talk about their objective and the Huaorani people scares and angers me. Their fierce determination admits no doubt. They are so firmly convinced that what they are doing is god’s will and absolutely right that they fiercely fight against questions, doubts, or other points of view. They never ask if they should. Instead, they interpret their own hubris as the voice of god in their heads. Nate and Rachel compete to be the first to convert a Huaorani person so that they can be the first, which one might think is not really the point of converting someone. They also never consider the impact of forcing the Huaorani to give up a way of life that they have lived for generations. This is the part that angers me. Towards the end of the book, when David returns to Ecuador and the Huaorani village where his mother worked, we see how destructive Western ways are. The people have rashes from wearing more clothes than they used to. They are losing their culture (which Rachel claims they never had) and language. They’ve lost a lot of their land in an underhanded government deal and have been forced to become sedentary. This theme in Five Wives is very much the story of colonialism.

Thomas never loses the human element in this big story. She took me inside the minds of people I thought I would never really have access to, since I tend to give evangelical Christians wide berth. The minds of the Elliots and the Saints are alien places to me. As I read their thoughts about god and saw their world view, I came across so many points when I wanted to call these people out. I wanted to ask them tricky questions that got me tossed out of Sunday school years ago. Mostly, I wanted to tell them that they should have left the Huaorani (and for that matter, the Quechua) alone. All of the missionaries would’ve done well to close their mouths, sit down, and listen to the people they meet instead of overwriting everything with what they believe is the only way to live and believe.

My emotional reaction should serve as a clue to how very, very good Five Wives is. For all that the characters infuriated me, I was deeply engaged in this book. This book is a brilliant character study in addition to being an exemplary work of historical fiction. Enough of my gushing! Just read it!