News
P
atricia Engel’s Infinite Country, released on March 2
by Simon & Schuster’s Avid Reader Press, already has
all the trappings of a charmed publication, even for alead title. The book, which PW’s starred review called “an out-
standing novel of migration and the Colombian diaspora,”
saw its first printing bumped from 30,000 to 65,000 copies
based on prepublication buzz that included a February Book
of the Month club selection and strong support from inde-
pendent booksellers and librarians.
Infinite Country was an instant hit at S&S as well, with CEOJonathan Karp going so far as to declare it “a modern clas-
sic,” saying it kept him “transfixed and enthralled from
beginning to end” in a letter to staff. And that was all before
Reese Witherspoon chose it as the March title for Reese’s
Book Club, which prompted Avid to go back for two more
print runs: a 5,000-copy second printing and 10,000-copy
third printing, for a total of 80,000 copies in print to date.
Behind the scenes, however, the novel’s path to publica-tion proved particularly special for the team that put it
together. For starters, it was the occasion of a publishing
An Immigration Story Finds a Home
reunion. Engel’s debut story
collection, Vida, came out
in 2010 from Grove Atlan-
tic’s Black Cat imprint and
was edited by Lauren Wein.
Wein left Grove in 2011 for
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,
where she spent the better
part of the next decade as
executive editor; Engel
stayed on as an author at
Grove, where she published
It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris
in 2013 and The Veins of the Ocean in 2016.
Wein is now editorial director at Avid Reader, overseeing
the imprint’s fiction and memoir program. And when Engel
finished the draft for Infinite Country, she said, “it was just
sort of natural” to reach back out to Wein. Engel’s agent,
Ayesha Pande, submitted the novel to a handful of editors,
including Wein, who acquired it in a two-book deal.
“We’ve always been friends,” Engel said.
“I wasn’t surprised that she understood what
I was trying to do with Infinite Country,
because she has this way of just digging into
my brain, understanding what my own goals
are, and helping me articulate them even
better.”
Wein said that working with Engel on Vida
was “a pivotal thing” for her as an editor. “It
takes a while for an editor to find their foot-
ing and find their confidence.” She added
that the feedback she got from Engel in
particular “was very instructive.”
A decade later, working on a new book by
the same author at a new imprint, it became
clear to Wein that the mutual education that
came from her creative collaboration with
Engel had stuck. Reading the Infinite Coun-
try manuscript for the first time, Wein said
she found herself recognizing “a maturation
process that happened that blew my mind.
It restores your faith in the fact that there’s
an organic movement of things, that people
really do learn and grow. And that you can
do that together with someone.”In memory of
Dr. Naomi Rosenblum
1925–Pioneering historian of photography
Author of A World History of Photography
and A History of Women PhotographersFROM HER FRIENDS AT ABBEVILLE PRESS
PH
OT
O:^WALTER^ ROS
ENBLUMLauren Wein