num_pages: 256
description: For readers of Valeria Luiselli and Edwidge Danticat an urgent and lyrical novel about a Colombian family fractured by deportation offering an intimate perspective on an experience that so many have enduredand 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 brutality of life in Bogot. 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 wages back to Elenas mother all the while weighing whether to risk overstaying their tourist visas or to return to Bogot. 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 Taliaeach one navigating a divided existence weighing their allegiance to the past the future to one another and to themselves. Rich with Bogot 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 familyfor whom every triumph is stitched with regret and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.
language: English
title: Infinite Country
publisher: Avid Reader Press