Joan Thomas

Joan Thomas is a Canadian author based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her novel Five Wives (2019) won the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction. The novel reimagines the aftermath of the 1956 killing of five American missionary men in the Ecuadorian Amazon and focuses on the experiences of their wives and children who remained in Ecuador. Five Wives is a meditation on faith, colonialism, and the stories we tell ourselves about meaning and sacrifice. Thomas examines the complicity of the missionaries and their families in the cultural destruction of the Huaorani people, while also treating the women's faith and grief with profound seriousness. Thomas's previous works include the novels Reading by Lightning (2008), which won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and Curiosity (2010), a novel about the Victorian scientist Mary Anning. She is known for her meticulous research and her ability to animate historical settings with contemporary emotional intelligence.