Infinite Country

A Novel

by Patricia Engel

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A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK and INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

WINNER OF THE 2021 NEW AMERICAN VOICES AWARD, LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL, A 2022 DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE FINALIST, AND A NATIONAL ENDOWMENT OF THE ARTS "BIG READS" SELECTION

"A profound, beautiful novel." —People * "Poignant." —BuzzFeed * "A breathtaking story of the unimaginable prices paid for a better life." —Esquire

This "heartbreaking portrait of a family dealing with the realities of migration and separation" (Time) is "a sweeping love story and tragic drama [and] an authentic vision of what the American Dream looks like in a nationalistic country" (Elle).
I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country.

Talia is being held at a correctional facility for adolescent girls in the forested mountains of Colombia after committing an impulsive act of violence that may or may not have been warranted. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogotá, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family.

How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. We see Talia's parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love in a market stall as teenagers against a backdrop of civil war and social unrest. We see them leave Bogotá with their firstborn, Karina, in pursuit of safety and opportunity in the United States on a temporary visa, and we see the births of two more children, Nando and Talia, on American soil. We witness the decisions and indecisions that lead to Mauro's deportation and the family's splintering—the costs they've all been living with ever since.

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself a dual citizen and the daughter of Colombian immigrants, gives voice to all five family members as they navigate the particulars of their respective circumstances. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country "is as much an all-American story as it is a global one" (Booklist, starred review).

Creators
- Patricia Engel
  
  Author
Publisher

Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Release date

March 2, 2021
Formats
- OverDrive Read
  - ISBN: 9781982159481
- EPUB ebook
  - ISBN: 9781982159481
  - File size: 7001 KB
Accessibility
Publisher statement (EPUB)
The publisher provides the following statement about the accessibility of the EPUB file supplied to OverDrive. Experiences may vary across reading systems. After borrowing the book, you may download the EPUB files to read in another reading system.

Summary

A simple complexity publication with some images, converted to meet EPUB Accessibility specifications of WCAG-AA level. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order, structural navigation, and semantic structure.
Ways Of Reading
- Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and font size, spaces between paragraphs, sentences, words, and letters, as well as color of background and text).
- All content can be read as read aloud speech or dynamic braille.
- Has alternative text descriptions for images.
Conformance
- The publication contains a conformance statement that it meets the EPUB Accessibility and WCAG 2 Level AA standard.
- This publication claims to meet EPUB Accessibility 1.0 WCAG 2.0 Level AA.
Navigation
- Table of contents to all chapters of the text via links.
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation.
Additional Information
- Page breaks included
Languages
- English
Reviews
- Publisher's Weekly
  
  Starred review from December 21, 2020
  Engel (The Veins of the Ocean) delivers an outstanding novel of migration and the Colombian diasporae. Talia breaks out of a reformatory for girls in Colombia with a single purpose: to reunite with her family in the U.S. Her parents, Elena and Mauro, fell in love as teenagers and had a child before fleeing from the violence, poverty, and uncertainty of Bogotá and moving to Houston, where “their ears took in English, English, all the time English, and if they heard Spanish, it was with no accent like their own.” After overstaying their visas, they have two more kids including Talia, the youngest, and move to various cities. But the family is separated when Mauro is deported for driving without a license. The narrative moves between past and present to chronicle Talia’s travails—first sent back to Colombia to live with her grandmother as a young girl, and later hitchhiking to Bogotá to meet Mauro—and the lives of Elena and Mauro, revealing the struggles of undocumented migrants and exploring “how people who do horrible things can be victims, and how victims can be people who do horrible things.” Engel’s sharp, unflinching narrative teems with insight and dazzles with a confident, slyly sophisticated structure. This is an impressive achievement. Agent: Ayesha Pande, Pande Literary.
- Kirkus
  
  Starred review from January 1, 2021
  A 15-year-old girl in Colombia, doing time in a remote detention center, orchestrates a jail break and tries to get home. "People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics--the elements most likely to ruin a life. They're wrong. It's love." As the U.S. recovers from the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, from the misery of separations on the border, from both the idea and the reality of a wall around the United States, Engel's vital story of a divided Colombian family is a book we need to read. Weaving Andean myth and natural symbolism into her narrative--condors signify mating for life, jaguars revenge; the embattled Colombians are "a singed species of birds without feathers who can still fly"; children born in one country and raised in another are "repotted flowers, creatures forced to live in the wrong habitat"--she follows Talia, the youngest child, on a complex journey. Having committed a violent crime not long before she was scheduled to leave her father in Bogot� to join her mother and siblings in New Jersey, she winds up in a horrible Catholic juvie from which she must escape in order to make her plane. Hence the book's wonderful first sentence: "It was her idea to tie up the nun." Talia's cross-country journey is interwoven with the story of her parents' early romance, their migration to the United States, her father's deportation, her grandmother's death, the struggle to reunite. In the latter third of the book, surprising narrative shifts are made to include the voices of Talia's siblings, raised in the U.S. This provides interesting new perspectives, but it is a little awkward to break the fourth wall so late in the book. Attention, TV and movie people: This story is made for the screen. The rare immigrant chronicle that is as long on hope as it is on heartbreak.
  COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- Booklist
  
  Starred review from December 1, 2020
  Fifteen-year-old Talia has a problem. She's stuck in a correctional facility for adolescent girls when she should be in Bogot� with her father, readying for a flight that will reunite her with her mother and siblings in the U.S. A memorable line--""It was her idea to tie up the nun."-- launches the narrative with the force of a cannon as it switches back and forth between the present and the past. The immigrant's story might be well-traveled ground, but Engel (The Veins of the Ocean, 2016) constructs a layered narrative outlining how the weight of every seemingly minor choice systematically cements into a crushing predicament. "They did not consider themselves immigrants. They never thought that far ahead and were young enough to believe none of their decisions were permanent." As Talia's parents, Mauro and Elena, migrate to the U.S., the fractured family tries to hold on to each other over the miles, even as their lives begin to unspool over parallel trajectories. Lively folktales of the Muisca peoples punctuate Engel's remarkable novel as it illuminates the true costs of living in the shadows. Told by a chorus of voices and perspectives, this is as much an all-American story as it is a global one.
  COPYRIGHT(2020) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- Good Reading Magazine
  
  America is becoming more divided due to its overwhelming social and political issues. These issues are rooted in colonialism and manifest in the form of racism, exploitation and fearmongering. This novel is a powerful book that provides a voice to those who have been silenced and sheds light on the difficulties surrounding immigration status in America. Talia is a 15-year-old girl who is serving time in a ‘prison school’ in Colombia after committing an untimely crime – she was just weeks shy of being reunited with her family in the US. In her desperation to catch her plane to the US, Talia escapes, and what follows is a series of interactions which are both compromising and hopeful. Interweaved is another story arc about the family’s past and how they came to be separated. We follow Elena, Mauro and their daughter Karina, who leave Colombia for the United States in pursuit of the American dream. When they arrive, they are confronted with the realities of their situation; with limited English and no support network, they are exploited and discriminated against. As they settle into their life in the US and their time on their temporary visa nears an end, they make the decision to overstay their visa. The aftermath of this decision is explored by Engel as she delves into the enduring trauma and struggles of this family and hence countless others. This novel is very moving and highlights the enduring fear that many people continue to live through and the injustice of their lack of rights and security. The reality that nothing is truly infinite when there are borders. Reviewed by Akina Hansen
- BookPage
  
  The fourth novel by Patricia Engel is a 21st-century odyssey about a Colombian family bifurcated by immigration rules. It’s an intriguing, compact tale, rife with both real-life implications and spiritual significance. Escaping poverty in Colombia, the family initially arrived in the U.S. on tourist visas that later expired. They remained together until the father, Mauro, was briefly imprisoned and then deported. Unable to bring infant Talia to her minimum-wage jobs, mother Elena sent the child, the youngest of three, to live with Talia’s grandmother in Bogotá. The story opens as Talia, now a nervy 15-year-old, breaks out of a Catholic reform school where she was sent after an impulsive, violent act. One of the novel’s multiple storylines follows Talia as she hitches rides back to Bogotá, where Mauro waits with a plane ticket to the United States, offering the possibility of a long-delayed family reunion. Another major storyline follows Elena, who tries to make a life for herself in New Jersey with her two older children. She is mistreated by one employer in a restaurant and disrespected by another. She finally lands a job with a wealthy family, taking care of a son who forms a stronger bond with Elena than with his own mother. Infinite Country joins a growing category of fiction about the U.S. and its attitude toward Latinx immigrants, and Engel stands out as an especially gifted storyteller who elevates this saga through the use of Andean folk tales. She also heightens our interest by shifting the novel’s perspective to Talia’s sister in New Jersey more than midway through the book, and her voice adds a new dimension to the tale. Engel does a marvelous job of rendering these characters as individuals, each with a unique story. Mauro’s journey is illuminated by his visits to the sacred Lake Guatavita outside Bogotá, where gods of wisdom reside, and where the birds above the lake mirror the family’s mantra: “We are all migrants here on earth.”