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 Bogotá 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 Bogotá, 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. I often wonder if we are living the wrong life in the wrong country.
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