Infinite Country

Infinite Country is a 2021 novel by the Colombian/American novelist Patricia Engel. It is a general fiction work covering a 20-year period during which a Colombian wife and husband emigrate to the United States, remaining as illegal aliens after their six-month travel visas expire. Their story is complex in that Mauro, the husband, is deported while Elena, the wife, remains in the United States with the older two of their three children. The heart of the novel concerns Talia, the youngest child, in her attempt to escape a girls’ reformatory and fly to the United States. Infinite Country was a New York Times bestseller, a Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, an Esquire Book Club choice, and an Indie Next selection. Elements of Engel’s life are mirrored in the novel: Like Elena and Mauro’s two daughters, she was the bright child of Colombian parents who ended up in New Jersey, while her age more closely mirrors that of Elena. Engel was the first woman to be awarded Colombia’s national literature prize, the Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana, in 2017.

Plot Summary

As the novel opens, Talia, the first important character introduced, is a 15-year-old girl serving a six-month sentence in a girls’ reformatory in the remote Colombian mountains as a result of pouring boiling oil over the head of a man who callously killed a kitten before her in the same manner.