The Great Divide
A Novel
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3.9 • 160 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A TODAY Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick!
A powerful novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, casting light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored there
It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.
Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister’s surgery. When she sees a young man—Omar—who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.
John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.
Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.
Named a Most Anticipated Book By: Washington Post * Book Riot * Electric Literature * LitHub * ELLE * The Millions * Goodreads * Reader’s Digest
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This historical novel transports you to 1900s Panama, putting a human face on the superhuman effort to cut a path between the world’s oceans. Hoping to find work, teenage Ada stows away on a ship crossing from Barbados to Panama. But when she disembarks, she’s immediately surrounded by the chaotic construction of the Panama Canal. Soon her life becomes entwined with those of a visiting doctor, his ill wife, and a local fisherman bitter about the treatment of the locals. Author Cristina Henríquez draws on meticulous research to create a deeply compelling ensemble of characters where all the rich historical detail feels lived in and immediate. If you like historical fiction that organically weaves issues like race, class, and imperialism into a story that’s first and foremost about a place and its people, The Great Divide delivers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The enthralling latest from Henríquez (The Book of Unknown Americans) tells the stories of migrant laborers, locals, and others affected by the Panama Canal project in 1907. Born and bred in Panama City, Francisco Aquino is a proud fisherman. His headstrong teenage son Omar yearns for more than his father's predictable life at sea, however, and gets hired at Culebra Cut, a notoriously difficult labor site, where he works to dig the canal alongside Barbadians, Jamaicans, and Haitians. Francisco, who calls the Americans "enemy invaders" for building the canal and harbors resentment over U.S. intervention in Panama's 1903 separatist movement, disapproves. There's also 16-year-old Ada Bunting, who arrives from Barbados to work as a washer woman so she can send money to help her sister, who has pneumonia. Her story is linked with that of Tennessee scientist John Oswald, who comes to Panama to study tropical diseases with his wife Marian, who contracts pneumonia and is cared for by Ada. Meanwhile, the residents of the southern town of Gatun learn that their community has been earmarked as the site of the canal's dam. The author delves deeply into themes of colonialism and labor exploitation, showing how the men take quinine daily to ward off tropical diseases while an American foreman rules over their worksite with an iron fist. Henríquez's pitch-perfect novel has the feel of a classic.
Customer Reviews
Not quite what I expected
I'm rather “meh” regarding this book. It wasn’t so much a historical novel about the process of the building of the canal as it was about a story of a group of people who are trying to save their town . . . more about them than the canal. It held my interest, but was hardly a compelling read for me. Not a disappointing read, but a disappointed reader who was expecting more of a history of the canal.