This historical fiction novel depicts the year 1907, a pivotal year during the building of the Panama Canal, told from the perspectives of several people deeply involved in, or affected by the project. The Panama Canal, forty-eight miles cutting through the isthmus, the heart of the country of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, completely changed the future and people of that country. We learn about the challenges of the project through the intertwined stories of several characters: John and Marian Oswald, Americans who came to Panama to try to solve the deadly problem of malaria; Joaquin and Valentina, Panamanians who fought the planned move of the town of Gatun to make way for the dam, part of the Canal; Francisco Aquino, a quiet and lonely fisherman on the Pacific coast, and his son Omar, who works with an international crew of men at body-breaking labor in “La Boca”, or the mouth, removing mud and rock with pick axes; and Ada Bunting, a biracial sixteen-year-old girl who comes from Barbados, desperate to earn money to help her sister Millicent receive the medical treatment she needs to survive.

We learn that malaria takes many lives as men struggle to do what seems impossible to many, digging through the Culebra mountain ridge, also losing men to landslides and other mining accidents. The workers were from all over the world, although most were from Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Martinique. We also see how the people of Panama had no voice in the decision to build the Canal, the path it would take and its consequences, and the fate of the nation as a result. It is interesting to see these decisions from the viewpoint of ordinary citizens, the invasion of all things American, overwhelming the local culture and way of life that existed for centuries. America was dealing with a racial divide of its own at this time, with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws in the American South. White Americans from the South often brought their views about black people with them to the Canal project, where many of the laborers were from Caribbean nations. This is depicted in the character of Miller, a foreman supervising workers from these nations, as well as local laborers, and his poor, abusive treatment of his crew.

No one realized that World War One would shock the world, beginning one month before the Canal was completed in 1914. The Canal’s impact on global trade was huge, and it changed the country of Panama forever. Approximately 5,600 people died during the American phase of Canal construction. While this novel is somewhat weak in structure and character development, it is worthwhile from the standpoint of seeing the American project from the eyes of those who did the work, and the country that America essentially took over to complete the amazing construction.