Virtual Event – Jonathan Lee and Patricia Engel

Magic City Books is proud to welcome Jonathan Lee for a virtual author program in celebration of his new novel, The Great Mistake, an enveloping, exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, a story of one man’s rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder.

Joining Jonathan in conversation will be Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country, 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.

This free event will be hosted on the Zoom platform and Facebook Live. To register in advance for the event on Zoom visit: https://magiccitybooks.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ASbiOAsaT7yKxo850NbuwQ.

After registering you will receive a confirmation email with details on how to join the event on Thursday June 17 at 7:00 pm CT.

The Great Mistake will be published on June 15, 2021. To pre-order a copy visit Magic City Books or shop online here: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/the-great-mistake/521.

Infinite Country is availabe now from Magic City Books or shop online here: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/infinite-country/525.

About The Great Mistake

Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing–on Park Avenue, in broad daylight, on Friday the thirteenth–shook the city. Green was born to a poor farmer, yet without him there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. And Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death–alone, misunderstood–is set to break free. As the detective assigned to Green’s case chases his ghost across the city, we meet a wealthy courtesan, a brokenhearted man in a bowler hat, and a lawyer turned politician whose decades-long friendship with Green is the source of both his troubles and his joys. A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him–yet enlarged it.

Jonathan Lee is the author of three novels, most recently High Dive, which was a best book of the year in publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and San Francisco Chronicle. He lives in New York.

“Jonathan Lee is so enviably talented it leaves the reader breathless. The Great Mistake is an unparalleled feat of elegance and craftsmanship. Lee’s 19th-century New York City is riveting, immersive, but best of all, it’s an immaculate blend of scale: he masters both the grand historic narratives and gritty intimate details. As envisioned by Lee, the life of Green feels emblematic of the New York City he built: ambitious, fraught, thrilling, and ultimately visionary.” –Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter

About Infinite Country

A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK AND INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“A knockout of a novel…we predict [Infinite Country] will be viewed as one of 2021’s best.” —O, The Oprah Magazine

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2021 from Esquire, O, The Oprah Magazine, Elle, GMA, New York Post, Ms. Magazine, The Millions, Electric Literature, LitHub, AARP, Refinery29, BuzzFeed, Autostraddle, She Reads, Alma, and more.

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. 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. If she misses her flight, she might also miss her chance to finally be reunited with her family in the north.

How this family came to occupy two different countries, two different worlds, comes into focus like twists of a kaleidoscope. 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. 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 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.

Award-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. And all the while, the metronome ticks: Will Talia make it to Bogotá 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?

Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality of the undocumented in America, Infinite Country 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.

Patricia Engel is the author of The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; and Vida, a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards, New York Times Notable Book, and winner of Colombia’s national book award, the Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana. She is a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her stories appear in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Born to Colombian parents, Patricia teaches creative writing at the University of Miami.