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As a series of political, economic, and natural crises have exposed the weaknesses of American institutions, a number of writers have explored the complex ways those institutions shape our lives, for good and ill. Few do so in a more viscerally powerfully way than the writers Kirstin Valdez Quade and Ryan Leigh Dostie.

The Five Wounds, Quade’s highly anticipated debut novel, delicately explores the way a local religious association and a nonprofit program for teen mothers influence the lives of one family in New Mexico, exposing them to opportunity, pain, abuse of power, and fellowship.

Formation, Ryan Leigh Dostie’s memoir of her time in the military, charts her deployment, her growth as a soldier and a person, as well as the military’s horrific mishandling of her rape at the hands of a fellow servicemember.