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But she was actually born in the United States and sent back to Bogota, her mother's hometown, as a baby as her mother tried to make way, make a better life for her other two children, Karina and Nando. PATRICIA ENGEL: Talia is a 15-year-old girl who is living in Bogota, Colombia.

Our co-host Ari Shapiro spoke to her about the main character in this book, a teenager named Talia. In this story, the central family has one foot in Colombia and one in the U.S. It's an ongoing process, a constant flow of people across borders.

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.In the new novel "Infinite Country," immigration is not a single event that happens at a point in time. Rich with Bogot urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, And all the while, the metronome ticks: Will Talia make it to Bogot in time? And if she does, can she bring herself to trade the solid facts of her father and life in Colombia for the distant vision of her mother and siblings in America? 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.Īward-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. We see them leave Bogot 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 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. How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope.

If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north. She urgently needs to get out and get back home to Bogot, where her father and a plane ticket to the United States are waiting for her. 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. "Remarkable.this is as much an all-American story as it is a global one." -įor 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 endured-and are enduring right now.