The main reason I enjoyed this so much was because it shone a light on a part of history and region I know so little about. The story was fast paced and the characters were all interesting. I think this would be an excellent summer reading choice (the cover is also gorgeous) and perfect for a long flight.

This book was about the people that came together during the building of the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal was a huge project that offered job opportunities and adventure. It is amazing to think about how many people it took to make the canal a success. The story starts in 1907 and we are introduced to characters that come from all over the world. We are also introduced to locals and learn about their feelings about the canal and how it affected their lives.

The history and politics of the Panama Canal were interesting, but I thought there would be more information. The author just kept introducing new characters for the book to follow. So the story became more of a character study with the building of the canal in the background. There was information about each character that did not seem relevant.

Highly recommend this one!! This is my first time reading one of their books but it won't be the last! This book sucks you in from the get-go and you will find yourself thinking about the characters long after you finish it. Do yourself a favor and get this book!!

Thank you for the opportunity to read this novel. I was not able to connect with the characters so I did not finish.

This was a beautifully written book with interesting storylines and great characters. I enjoyed following along on their journeys, and loved reading more about this time period, which I wasn't familiar with prior to reading this.
I also love how beautiful the cover is.

I am sorry for the inconvenience but I don’t have the time to read this anymore and have lost interest in the concept. I believe that it would benefit your book more if I did not skim your book and write a rushed review. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience.

You can no longer take the Panama Canal for granted after reading this book about the people who were displaced or involved in the construction. So many died from so many different nations. This is a book that will complement our historic knowledge of this magnificent event and the people of Panama. By the way a Panama hat is NOT from Panama.

What a wonderful book!

For a short novel, it provided varying perspectives through alternating chapters. This gave depth to the many aspects of what the impact of the canal had on different people's lives.

I definitely recommend this book those interested in historical fiction, colonialism, familial relationships, and community.

I appreciated reading about a significant part of Panamanian history.

A compelling historic fiction about the Panama Canal. With the interlocking characters, I def wanted more!! Esp the storyline about Gatun. Loved the theme about parent child relationships as well.

In a Nutshell: A literary fiction focussed on Panama during the time of the construction of the Panama Canal. Note that this isn’t a book directly about the canal or its construction, but about the people connected to the canal in some way or the other during that period. A great book if you go in with the right expectations and enjoy character-oriented fiction.

Plot Preview:
1907, Panama.
Francisco, a Panamanian fisherman, hates the commercialisation of his country under the foreigners, and hence resents his son Omar’s joining the canal construction crew. Omar, however, wants to learn and earn more than his little village can offer him.
Sixteen-year-old Ada has heard about Panama having many jobs. She has stowed away to Panama, hoping to get some work and earn enough for her ailing sister’s surgery back in Barbados. Her mother Lucille, a tailor, doesn’t yet know of her running away from home, but when she finds out the reason, will she be forgiving?
John Oswald, an American medical expert, has only one goal for his work in Panama: to eradicate malaria. His wife Marian, not the same after a tragedy that changed their lives, also accompanies him to Panama, though there isn’t much left in their marriage.
These are just a few of the many characters you will meet over the course of this novel. Through their eyes, you will get a little glimpse what happened in Panama during the construction of the canal that runs till today.
The story comes from the third person perspectives of multiple characters.

I picked up this book because I thought it would tell me how and why the Panama Canal was built. But the story turned out to be so much more! As a literary fiction fan and as someone who loves character-oriented storylines, this revelation came as a pleasant surprise. Once I altered my reading expectations from historical to literary, I was fully absorbed by the storyline.

There is no overarching plot in the novel. So if you wish to read this book hoping to know the hows and whys of the construction of the Panama Canal, you won’t get *that* much information. This is not a novel ABOUT the canal construction but a novel DURING the canal construction. It is not about the place but about its people. Only a small part of the book deals with the American perspective. I applaud this decision of keeping the story of Panama focussed on the Panamanians and other coloured characters.

The title offers a clear idea of the core content. The “great divide” existed not just across the two oceans that the governments were trying to connect but also across the people of and in Panama, many of whose lives were upturned simply because they happened to live near the land taken over for the canal construction. Whenever we read of such larger-than-life projects in fiction, rarely do we get to see the picture of the manual blood and toil that went into the work. This book is one rare exception, and I respect the author for choosing to tell the story from their eyes.

The characters are the heart and soul of this book. I loved their diversity in terms of ethnicity, nationality, and social standing. We understand from local Panamanians how their life has been altered by this forced canal construction, we see the lives of the workers who migrated to Panama from the surrounding Caribbean nations and beyond to work on the canal, and we hear the supposedly superior perspective of the Americans and the French who have taken up the project and are willing to do anything they can to ensure its (and their) success. All the characters are represented realistically, with enough shades of grey to make them human rather than caricatures.

This book is clearly a labour of love by the author, but even its enjoyment will need to be a labour of love by the reader. The start of the book is somewhat episodic, so the progress is slow, and at times, frustrating. Each of the initial chapters focusses on one character, and every subsequent chapter brings a new, often unrelated character. This goes on till at least 30-35%, after which you begin to see hints of the connection across the characters. So, you need to have a lot of patience at the start as it feels more like a short story collection than a novel for the first one-third or so. But the patience is worth it. Once the connection across the characters began popping up, the book turns into a jigsaw puzzle with the stunning final picture coming into view.

Despite the plethora of characters, I was never once confused about who’s who. The chapters that introduce these people are well detailed, and establish their persona clearly before moving on to the next character. The elaborate backstories and plotting to keep all the character arcs in sync were impeccable.

The author has captured the pulse of the era and the location through her descriptions. It is so easy to visualise the place as well as the people, thanks to the lyrical writing. She even incorporates the beliefs and superstitions of the various cultures, while also capturing their solidarity, their resilience, their family values, and their independence of spirit. The plot feels like an ode to all those unsung heroes whose sacrifices made the canal possible.

I especially admire the story’s candour. The characters don’t mince words when it comes to declaring their opinions about the external influences ruining their lives. The selfishness, rudeness, racism, and even the ignorance of some Americans who were in Panama comes out clearly. It is refreshing to see the book not indulge in white glorification but stress on their flawed attitudes and their blind adherence to profits and personal success with no eye on the human cost. At the same time, not all the whites are painted as villains tarnished by greed.

Only two issues:
1. The ending left me wanting more. The character arcs do come to a satisfying end, and not even in a forced HEA. It was a genuine ‘Life Goes On’ kind of finish. But something still felt missing. I must also add that I have no idea how else the author could have ended this complicated story.
2. I was keen to read the author’s thoughts on her writing choices for this work, and also a small note on the background, the significance, the cost (financial and human) of construction, and the issues currently faced by the Panama Canal thanks to climate change. But my ARC had no elucidatory note at all. I hope there is some kind of add-on content with actual facts and an author’s note detailing her writing choices in the final book, because the story deserves it, maybe even needs it.

All in all, this is an intricately-sketched story focussing on the lives of varied people during the construction of the Panama Canal. It is not a story of the revolutionary waterway, but a story of some flawed humans and their lives against the background of this massive construction endeavour.

Much recommended to lovers of literary fiction who would love to see a historical story from the eyes of the characters who lived through it. From this character-oriented book, you will learn a bit about the Panama Canal, but you will learn much more about humans and what drives them.

This was my first book by this author, and I’d love to read more of her work. Such books show why good writing is a combination of art + craft. I hope that readers in this world of instant gratification will have the patience to see its beauty unfold.

4.25 stars.

My thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Great Divide”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

Another part of history that shed light for me! the characters were very relatable and I always love the women characters that are strong that you can look up to.

Historical fiction at its finest...⁣
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Loved. I absolutely loved The Great Divide.⁣
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Brief Summary⁣
A powerful novel about the construction of the Panama Canal, casting light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored there.⁣
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I'm not sure where the subpar reviews are coming from on this one? Maybe if you go in expecting it to all be about the construction of the canal? What The Great Divide did so well is immerse you into that time period -- using a plethora of characters. It shows how people's homes were impacted, it shows how character's lives were affected, it shows how manipulative the media was even back then, it shows how the turn of the century impacted everything involving/surrounding the canal, it shows how the US inserted themselves yet again without any thought of how many lives would be impacted. I could go on and on, I loved it.⁣ My only gripe would be that I think it could have been longer, I would have loved more time with each character 💜
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I highly recommend this to all historical fiction fans.⁣
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Thank you @netgalley for this free copy.

What I love so much about this book is how much you learn about various people and what their lives are like. It is yes, one story, but it is so much more. I love the historical aspect of the novel--but it is about people and how they navigate these historical moments. It is historical fiction at its best.

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.

Based around the time of the building of the Panama Canal, the story follows several characters as they start anew or change. I liked the pacing and writing and how all the stories intertwined within the book.

A startingly beautiful book jacket design leads the reader into the era, 1907, when the Panama Canal was being built. Like a good reporter, the author’s focus is not on the engineering or mechanics of the Canal, but on the people. These are the ones who came here to make their fortune, cure the endemic illnesses, seek adventure, to help their families at home, or to make a stand for the land that has always been part of their heritage. Each person has a story that often melds into another’s in unexpected ways that propel the plot. Lots of history but easily learned and appreciated as each person is developed. Descriptions of the land, marketplace, digging, and journeys are well told. The great divide is not only the canal but the divide of racism, classism, economics, and sexism that infiltrates the experience of the people who lived then. Highly recommended.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars--

The Great Divide is a beautiful work of fiction that explores the interwoven lives of a cast of characters all present and somehow involved in the digging of the Culebra Cut through the mountains of Panama for the would-be Panama Canal.

-A white American doctor come to cure malaria and his restless former-botanist wife.

-An intrepid young girl from Barbados who travels as a stowaway hoping to find work in Panama to save her ailing sister.

-Their determined Barbadian mother who took her daughters away from the plantation of their birth where their ancestors were enslaved.

-An aging fisherman, beset by tragedy and struggling to connect with his young adult son, who is among the few Panamanians to take work on the canal.

-A fish merchant and his vociferous wife set on resisting colonial forces by protesting plans to relocate the beloved town she grew up in to build a dam.

While I enjoyed the prose and many of the themes immensely, I will say that I would have liked more of a plot. This book it about the characters and capturing this one moment and its implications. It meanders slowly through the inner thoughts and daily lives of its characters. I did especially love the small doses of everyday magical realism sprinkled throughout. By having a bird's eye view of the connections between characters, the reader gets to delight in the role that coincidence and intuition plays in their lives.

Many thanks to Ecco and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Delighted by this historical fiction set in early 1900’s Panama during the building of the canal. The setting was completely new to me but the heart of they story was completely within the cast of characters. I was invested in each of their stories. I read this during an incredibly busy time and it kept my attention well and I always wanted to pick it up to continue.

This is the March @readwithjenna pick. Visiting the Panama Canal is actually on my bucket list and this historical fiction about the construction of the canal was fascinating.
Huge thank you to @netgalley @harper.audio and @netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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I really enjoyed reading "The Great Divide". The story was interesting as I knew little about the building of the Panama Canal for the people's perspectives.