Many divides

Imagination can separate or connect individuals, leading to resentment or harmony - as suggested by  the enticing theme of Cristina Henríquez's The Great Divide. 

The book opens in 1907 with a fisherman scoffing that anyone might dream of breaking through the Cordillera Mountains connecting the Pacific and Atlantic oceans before reconsidering. “Perhaps the problem, he thought, was that a person needed faith to be able to see things that did not exist, to imagine a world not yet made…" Francisco had lost faith years earlier, raising his young son alone, and "his imagination itself had withered and, devoid of imagination, his entire world had shrunk to the point that he could not see beyond what as right in front of his face.”  

Francisco does not understand why more than 4,000 laborers sign on for the grueling work, including his own son who dreams about how the wages might transform his life.  

The book connects a diverse set of characters for a few short weeks – the fisherman who is furious at his son for not becoming a fisherman, a woman who leaves Jamaica to earn money for her sister’s operation, a withdrawn malaria researcher and his unhappy botanist wife, a small-time fish broker who joins his wife in organizing a protest.  Underlings become the scapegoats when foremen, doctors and managers are late or fail to do their jobs. 

Great Divide refers to more than the Panama Canal, completed seven years later, but also to racial and class struggles, family strife and internal conflicts, the difference between those who hope and others who have given up. 

Some characters outgrow the aspirations and potential of youth more quickly than others. A rough foreman, puzzled by his anger and lost time, is intent on making others around him miserable, willing to work his crew to death. He recalls a life of “fighting at school, roughing up anyone who looked at him sideways,” constantly angry without knowing why. He detested school and left early: “From what he had seen, it was just a means of getting people to behave in agreed-upon ways while fooling them into thinking it was for their own good.” Of course, a lack of education and skills is certain path to such servitude. He compares past dreams with reality. "Miller had never been to a circus, but one had come through South Carolina when he was a boy and talk of it had captured his imagination…. He was supposed to have been something by now…. But the world, changing quicker than he could keep up, had reduced him to this.” 

A few characters stand up for themselves, keeping their dignity intact, like the journalist who defies her editor by rushing to cover a village protest. Or the Jamaican woman who insists on purchasing medicine in the whites-only section of the store. Ada confronts the clerk who challenges her, resulting in a brief moment of triumph followed by lingering “Shame, and anger at being shamed” that can damage the soul.    

As a fisherman, Francisco despises the canal, recognizing that the engineering feat will transform Panama's economy. Still, he seeks to end the estrangement with his son, traveling to the noisy jobsite and witnessing earth “stripped and carved bare.” He finds it hard to look at the site crowded with machines, smoke, and piles of dirt:  “even more bewildering than what had been done to the land – what had been done to his country – was how many hundreds of men were participating in it…. What he saw as he stared across that vast chasm was not simply a canal, but a great divide that would sever Panama in two.” Grief overwhelms him and “He imagined himself descending into the Mouth not as a traitor or a martyr or a sacrificial lamb  but as a father whose love was infinitely greater than his sorrow or fear.”

Imagination and faith intertwine, best employed with hope than fear. At a low point, during the search for his son, Francisco’s imagination and empathy with youthful ambition returns. With that comes strength to appreciate what was special in the past and recognize the evolving possibilities that lie ahead.