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. Her father, Mauro, has tried unsuccessfully to get her released from the institution. He has an airline ticket for Talia, who was born in the United States, enabling her to fly to New Jersey, where her mother, Elena, lives with her older sister, Karina, and brother, Nando.

After Talia masterminds an escape from the reformatory, the story shifts back and forth between the account of her successful trip to her father in Bogotá and the mostly chronological story of how her family came to be so spread apart. The narrator relates the meeting of Mauro, a street urchin ejected by his mother at age 10, and Elena, the only child of Perla, a diminutive single mother who owns and lives above a failing lavandería, a laundry. Their romance and marriage take place over an extended period.

After the birth of their first child, Karina, Mauro becomes convinced that he can find more lucrative work by emigrating, something Elena has never considered but which she immediately decides she wants to do. They acquire six-month travel visas and fly to Texas. Mauro becomes disenchanted with the United States and, about the time their visas are to expire, decides he is ready to move back to Colombia. Elena then tells him she is pregnant. The baby, Fernando, is born in Texas, making him a US citizen, the only one in the family legally permitted to remain in the country. They relocate to South Carolina, where they suffer a good deal of physical and verbal abuse, and then to Delaware. During their first winter there, their third child, Talia, is born.

Mauro develops a significant off-and-on problem with alcohol and is fired from several jobs. When the police find him sleeping in the family’s aged minivan, they arrest him. Elena bails him out of jail, and the family relocates to New Jersey. There they stay with the family of Dante, a seemingly benevolent immigrant who finds work for both Mauro and Elena. Mauro confronts Dante about stealing some of his pay, and as a result of the altercation, Mauro is arrested and detained for several months before being deported to Colombia.

Elena remains in New Jersey, working and trying to raise the three children. When she realizes she cannot adequately care for an infant, she makes the painful decision to send Talia to live with Perla. After this, Elena is raped by her employer at the restaurant where she works. She realizes she has no recourse and initially is not even able to resign from the restaurant.

Feeling that he is an abject failure, Mauro descends into full-blown alcoholism and becomes a street person. He often sleeps in the street near the laundry so he can see Talia, who is being raised and educated by Perla. At a particularly low point, Mauro encounters a young woman named Ximena, who counsels him and draws him into an alcoholism recovery institution. Though he suffers relapses, Mauro eventually attains sobriety and gains worthwhile work. Perla welcomes him back into her home and Talia’s life.

The family keeps in touch via phone calls. Though they are able to maintain a connection in this manner, the children’s cultural development makes the parents recognize how distinct their upbringings are. Eventually, they make video calls to one another, each parent pretending the other has not changed.

Elena wants Talia to return to the United States. Talia is aware that Perla’s health is failing and that neither she nor the laundry will survive if she leaves Colombia. She adores her grandmother and is devastated by her progressive dementia and eventual death. Elena is equally distraught that she cannot be with her mother as she dies.

In the United States, Elena takes on several increasingly lucrative housekeeping jobs until she lands a cleaning position with an upper-middle-class family. Quickly it becomes apparent that she is adept at relating to their hostile, autistic 12-year-old son, Lance, and the family asks her to become his nanny. She relocates her own children into a guest house.

Now in their late adolescence, Karina and Nando narrate portions of the story, describing their very difficult, rarified experiences. Karina is academically oriented and articulate. She is the more Americanized of the two, even though she is the one who is an illegal alien. She vividly describes the absurdity and hypocrisy of her high school experience. Nando is the more aesthetic of the two, a sensitive artist who is brutalized by bullies who attack him because of his seeming alien nature, even though he is the one American citizen in his family.

As this chronology is being developed, the narrative returns periodically to Talia’s journey across the Colombian countryside. Her first encounter after escape is with a grandfatherly man who helps her evade a military patrol by saying she is his niece. In a café, Talia meets a foreigner, a Frenchman, who assists her by buying clothes and food. He clearly desires more from her, though Talia diverts his attention. When he falls asleep, she steals his billfold and runs away. Her third encounter is with a young man called Aguja—“needle”—who has a motorbike and, since he is headed in the general direction of Bogotá, agrees to take her part of the way. Twice he tells her he has to turn around and head home, only to change his mind and take her farther. Ultimately, he delivers her to her father’s apartment. The following day, Mauro takes Talia to the airport and sees her onto a plane headed to New Jersey. The departure and flight occur smoothly, and the reunion in the United States is filled with love.

Now only Mauro is left in Colombia. He carefully plots out an attempt to reenter the United States by flying to Panama and traveling through Mexico into the United States. He accomplishes his plan and eventually arrives at the home of Elena and his children.