The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez

Thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy of this book.

When I started this book, I knew nothing about Panama. I follow a content creator online who lives in Panama. That doesn't mean I know anything about it.

This book is centered on the creation of the Panama Canal. It was begun by the French and then abandoned. Panama fought for independence from Colombia, but was still struggling to figure itself out when the Americans came along to take over building the canal. Our characters are Mr. and Mrs. Oswald (an American couple who came to Panama to do research into mosquitos and eradicating malaria), Ada (a Jamaican girl who ran away from home to work in Panama to send money home for her sister's life-saving surgery), Omar (a young man who got a job working in the canal digging it out against his father's wishes), Jean Francois (a vendor in the market whose wife's hometown is going to be wiped out by the dam), and various secondary characters. I didn't have any trouble keeping the characters straight, but I didn't feel terribly attached to any of them. There was a distance that may have been a function of there being so many and jumping around to their perspectives.

I say the story is about the building of the Panama Canal, but really, that's just the setting. It is the catalyst for a lot of what the characters do, but not much actually happens. There is no big mystery. Each of the character's stories gets wrapped up and has an ending, but there is no overarching plot. It's a slow novel and is definitely focused on character growth.

I loved the descriptions of Panama. It was always wet. The jungle was real and took some work to walk through. The cadence of the Panamanians' speech patterns were well done. I definitely knew when it was an American speaking versus a Panamanian.

I really liked it. It was a smooth, easy read. It wouldn't have hurt it any to be 50 pages longer, but it was good and I feel like I have a better sense of what that time was like.