“At the heart of her storytelling is a deep sense of compassion. This is a writer who understands that exile can be as much an emotional state as a geographical one, that the agony of leaving tugs against the agony of being left behind. . . To immerse oneself in Engel’s prose is to surrender to a seductive embrace, a hypnotic beauty that mingles submersion with submission.”
----The New York Times Book Review
“Fast-paced, irresistibly alluring . . . Engel’s voice is lyrical . . . she has an all-seeing eye that misses nothing . . . The Veins of the Ocean is a tale of redemption and restoration that believes forgiveness is unattainable until one forgives oneself.”
----Miami Herald
“Lush and entrancing, steeped in love and sorrow, faith and myth. This is a novel about redemption and place and home and the bonds of family, how inescapable they are, for better and worse . . . Patricia Engel is a gorgeous writer and I love the confidence of her prose. She knows the story she is telling, inside and out. She knows the story and its unfathomable depths and so that’s how we experience reading this novel—fully, deeply, like an ocean.”
----Roxane Gay, Book of the Month
“A haunting and touching tale . . . Engel’s writing is powerfully descriptive and lyrical . . . the book leaves the reader with faith in the world.”
----Book Riot, one of the Best Books of the Year So Far
“Poignant . . . a sea of lush language . . . The Veins of the Ocean is [Engel’s] best yet . . . filled with fascinating characters and beautiful prose.”
----Tampa Bay Times
“Engel’s work is often backdropped by diaspora, but in The Veins of the Ocean she tackles immigration head on via the story of a Colombian woman escaping her family’s past.”
----O, The Oprah Magazine
“[A] profound, daring venture . . . [Engel is] a unique and necessary voice for the Americas . . . so lucid and nakedly honest that the book is a great pleasure to read, even while it’s breaking your heart . . . It takes place in three lands separated by yawning political chasms, and, also, in three lands linked by the sea, by the mysterious sea, brimming with beauty, life and power. In short, it is our world, mirrored back to us, revealed anew.”
----San Francisco Chronicle