The building of the Panama Canal was dangerous, exciting, and sometimes harrowing. Envisioned in 1870, it took forty years to accomplish. Frances Snyder discusses two books, one nonfiction and the other a novel, that examine not only the history of this engineering marvel, but also reveal the people involved. David McCullough’s The Path Between the Seas is a national book award winning account of this event – revealing aspects from medical discoveries to incidents of skullduggery. The Great Divide by Cristina Henriquez is fiction that casts light on the unsung people who lived, loved, and labored in Panama during construction of its canal.
