I lie in bed and study the shadows on my ceiling, leafy and stretched oblong, not so different from the ones in Dayton. I try to work out what I feel about this new place, think I’ll never fall asleep. Then the scent of Mother’s Dayton soap in the sheets blurs me and I’m anesthetized into deep, dark Panama night.

She is fifteen, ready for something— anything—to happen. What happens is Panama. The U.S. government has asked her father to help build the Canal. The whole family will go, be a part of this historical event. But Panama isn’t as she imagines. Americans live in the Zone, which has been designed to look and feel just like an American town. She wants more. She wants different. The fantasy is out there. She’ll find it.

But what happens when the fantasy she finds is a secret romance with a man from the other side of the tracks—literally?

YA Historical Fiction: Step into the Panama Canal Zone of the 1910s, a perfectly manicured American town dropped into a vibrant, dangerous jungle on the verge of a world-changing event.
Coming of Age Story: A restless fifteen-year-old girl, stifled by her manufactured American life, yearns for something more—an authentic experience that will challenge everything she’s ever known.
Class Difference Romance: She’s the daughter of a respected American engineer. He’s an educated, enigmatic laborer from Spain. Their connection is immediate, intense, and completely forbidden.
First Love: A passionate, secret affair unfolds in the shadows of the world’s greatest engineering project, a relationship that could cost them everything.