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An urgent and lyrical novel about a Colombian family fractured by deportation, offering an intimate perspective on an experience that so many have endured—and are enduring right now.
At the dawn of the new millennium, Colombia is a country devastated by half a century of violence. Elena and Mauro are teenagers when they meet, their blooming love an antidote to the mounting uncertainty of life in Bogotá. Once their first daughter is born, and facing grim economic prospects, they set their sights on the United States.
They travel to Houston and send earnings back to Elena’s mother, all the while weighing whether to risk overstaying their tourist visas or to return to Bogotá. As their family expands, and they move again and again, their decision to ignore their exit dates plunges the young family into the precariousness of undocumented status, the threat of discovery menacing a life already strained. When Mauro is deported, Elena, now tasked with caring for their three small children, makes a difficult choice that will ease her burdens but splinter the family even further.
Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself the daughter of Colombian immigrants and a dual citizen, gives voice to Mauro and Elena, as well as their children, Karina, Nando, and Talia—each one navigating a divided existence, weighing their allegiance to the past, the future, to one another, and to themselves. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality for the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family—for whom every triumph is stitched with regret and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.
(Summary provided by the author.)
Patricia Engel is the author of five works of fiction. Her most recent book, a short story collection titled The Faraway World, was a finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, longlisted for The Story Prize and the Chautauqua Prize, and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, and a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year,
Her novel Infinite Country, a New York Times bestseller, won the New American Voices Award, a Florida Book Award, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It was also named a Washington Post Notable Book of the Year, a Reese’s Book Club pick, an Indie Next pick, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Best Book of the Year, and more.
Her other books include The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and the Young Lions Fiction Award, winner of Colombia’s Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, a Florida Book Award, International Latino Book Award, Paterson Book Award and Independent Publisher Book Award, longlisted for the Story Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
Patricia has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and an O. Henry Award. Her books have been translated into many languages and selected as an NEA Big Read.
Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, A Public Space, Ploughshares, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Oprah Daily, and anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, Catapult, and in numerous anthologies including Tales of Two Americas and Cuba on the Verge.
Born to Colombian parents and raised in New Jersey, Patricia is a graduate of New York University and earned her MFA at Florida International University. She is a Professor in the English and Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami.
(Biography provided by the author)
