Beginning unforgettably with a young girl’s high-octane escape from a Catholic reform school, Engel’s short but sweeping novel gives voice to three generations of a Colombian family torn apart by man-made borders. When Elena and Mauro move their children to the United States, the cruelty of deportation sunders their family, but never their bonds. Gorgeously woven through with Andean myths and the bitter realities of living undocumented, Infinite Country tells a breathtaking story of the unimaginable prices paid for a better life. So too does it reckon with the complex interior world of immigration, from profound questions of identity to the daily pain of longing for a lost homeland. —Adrienne Westenfeld