Solid novel, set in canal-cutting era Panama. The divides are within us and without, and typically across families. ( )

Kirkus: An anti-imperialist fairy tale about the building of the Panama Canal.

Henríquez’s novel begins in 1907, with work on the canal well underway, and reveals how its construction changes the lives of multiple characters of varying nationalities, classes, and races, each in Panama for their own reasons. Henríquez is skilled at juggling the many subplots. Among the central characters, Ada Bunting from Barbados is the stereotypical sentimental heroine. The biracial 16-year-old has come to Panama to earn money to save her ailing sister’s life; she gets a job nursing the sick wife of wealthy, idealistic, but emotionally stunted malaria researcher John Oswald (whose under-explored complexity makes him one of the book’s more interesting characters). Plucky Ada begins a tepid romance with young Panamanian Omar Aquino, whose broken relationship with his fisherman father Francisco exemplifies the divided loyalties and resentments of Panamanians treated as second-class citizens in their own country. Francisco sells to fishmonger Joaquín, whose wife ropes her husband into organizing a demonstration of passive resistance against Canal Commission orders to dismantle and move her entire hometown. A host of other characters are sketched in, from an Antiguan cook who undermines Ada to an inept French doctor, an intuitive palm reader, and a Barbadian sugar planter in love with Ada’s mother but too weak-willed to fight for her. Along the way, Henríquez plugs in the history that many North Americans probably don’t know: the Panamanian civil war and intervention by the United States, which paid the country, newly independent from Colombia, $10 million dollars for full control of the Canal Zone. The depiction of white North Americans and Caribbean planters as at best clueless, more often mercenary and cruelly racist, is undoubtedly accurate. Unfortunately, and despite Henríquez’s lyrical prose, they never feel fully realized as individuals. Neither does virtuous Ada, the noble Panamanians, or Mrs. Oswald, a representative of white female victimhood who has sacrificed her intellectual ambition for a loveless marriage.

Despite panoramic ambitions, the novel never quite catches fire. ( )

People are coming to Panama to work on the canal, which will change the shipping trade. It will also divide Panama. The story follows many characters. Marian Oswald who accompanied her husband John who came to help defeat malaria. Ada who sailed there as a castaway to earn moeny to help her sister Millicent who needs surgery. Omar, a Panamanian, who wants to help build the canal, however this desire causes a rift between him and his father, Francisco, a fisherman. There are many others, but the impact of the canal on the lives and towns and families is an interesting time of history.
Very enjoyable historical fiction. ( )

Wonderful story filled with many interesting and believable characters with the backdrop of the digging of the Panama Canal.

The novel is told by many characters who intersect often in rather minor ways. Ada is a young woman who hides in a ship from Barbados who is looking for work to help her sister at home get an operation. Omar, is the son of a fisherman who is very opposed to the Canal. Omar, not wanting to be a fisherman, goes off to join the digging drew much to the displeasure of his father and don't speak to each other for months. Their is an American man working on the canal whose wife is dying; Ada becomes a maid in the house. There are other characters who fill out the scene: the doctor caring for the ill wife, the other diggers who form a sort of friendship with Omar, the cruel overseer of the diggers, the jealous cook in the American's home.

The book is not so much plot driven but driven by the experiences of these individuals all caused and connected somehow by the digging of the canal. Very good read. ( )

*well-written book with a captivating storyline
*easy to read and kept my interest from cover to cover
*great character development
*highly recommend ( )