Shelby Hiatt

It’s early 1900s; the Wright Brothers are trying to get the first aeroplanes to fly and the Panama Canal is being built. The Canal Zone, Panama is the where this old fashioned love story is set.

Told in the first person this novel gives you an insight to a 15 year old girl’s mind. After moving to the Canal Zone with its’ oppressive heat and strange insects she falls for one of the workers, Frederico, a 20 year old Spanish aristocrat. They start a forbidden romance and she becomes very good a lying to her parents.

I enjoyed the history throughout the book, although it does start of a little slow. Suited to teenage girls over 16 years.… (mais)

After taking a trip to Panama recently, I've been eager to read anything I can about it. This is a historical fiction/romance about a 15-18 year old young woman who moves to Panama with her parents. Her father works on the canal and she lives in the American Canal Zone
where life is not at all what she expected. She begins to live a double life, one as the good daughter and one as the lover of a Spanish canal laborer. A very good read.

The author tries to incorporate Wilbur and Orville Wright as neighbors and friends of the young woman and her family. It would have been better if that whole idea was used in another book. It didn't add anything to the story.… (mais)

Reviewed by hoopsielv for TeensReadToo.com

This novel begins in Ohio. A young girl lives next door to the Wright brothers as they are experimenting with airplanes. She watches the world go by, content, yet longing inside for more.

The announcement of a canal being built in Panama comes around her ninth birthday. Her father starts to get letters trying to persuade him to join as an engineer. He dismisses it as life goes on.

Finally, when she is fifteen, they decide to join the canal project and commit to living in Panama for three years. She's disappointed at first when the Zone is filled with families just like hers. Where is the excitement that was promised to her?

Harry, a friend of her father's, allows her to tag along as he visits the workers for the census. It beats going to school and gives her a glimpse into the Panama that's bound of offer more.

She knows Federico is different from the moment that she lays eyes on him. He's well-educated, orderly, smooth, and handsome. He's a pick-and-shovel man on the canal, which surprises her. He seems to be cut out for so much more than dirt-digging.

They become secret lovers from different worlds yet are united as one. What will become of them once the canal is finished?

I adored this novel for both the love story and the history of the Panama Canal. The author intertwined the two stories together smoothly and created a great piece of work.… (mais)

A fifteen-year-old girl living in Ohio in the early twentieth century is excited when she learns her family will move to Panama, where her father will have a job helping to build the Panama Canal. She hopes for an exotic and exciting adventure, but is disappointed when she finds that her new home is the Zone, which the Americans have made into a town just like those back home.

While visiting a building site for the canal, she meets the intriguing Federico, a young man who seems far too cultured to be an ordinary canal worker. He is sophisticated and loves books - just what she has been looking for. She begins a love affair with him which transitions her from childhood to adulthood, although in the end she finds herself more emotionally invested and heartbroken than she had intended.

I was intrigued by the description of this book because I had never read a book about the building of the Panama Canal and I am always on the lookout for unusual historical fiction. But ultimately I was rather disappointed by this book. There were some historical errors, and I was rather unsettled by the sexual relationship between the fifteen-year-old narrator and the much older Federico. Also, and this is more of a personal pet peeve, I was really annoyed that the narrator’s name is never revealed. Overall I wouldn’t highly recommend this book, although it might have some appeal to readers particularly interested in the historical setting.… (mais)