Infinite Country

If you take one thing away from this post, pre-order this book. It is absolutely wonderful, thought provoking, and utterly captivating. It came HIGHLY recommended to me by my friend Morgan Hoit, who knows her stuff and told me it could be THE book of 2021. I am inclined to agree with her. It is beautifully written (I found myself feeling jealous at times, wishing I could write even a fraction as well as the author) and centers around a family divided between Bogota, Colombia and the US. It opens with Talia who has just escaped an all-girls prison (the book opens with her tying up a nun) in the mountains of Colombia. When not imprisoned, she lives with her father Mauro who was deported from the US back to Bogota when she was just a baby. Meanwhile, her mother Elena and her two siblings Karina and Nando, are still living (undocumented) in the US. Her siblings are trying to fit in at the local high school as her mother works to earn enough to support them and send money back home. Told from the perspective of all five family members, this is a novel about family, pain, suffering, and sacrificing for the people you love. One of my priorities this year is to read books about people and families with backgrounds different than my own and this one is particularly poignant especially when thinking about immigration and undocumented workers. Add to that the writing, and this is a book you just can’t miss. It flies by in under 200 pages – please read it!