Francisco sits alone in his fishing boat, reflecting on rumors of a planned canal through Panama's mountains.

Ada sneaks aboard a Royal Mail ship bound for Panama, disguised in men's clothing to blend in with the passengers.

John and Marian Oswald arrive in Panama for John's public health work, struck by the country's underdevelopment and humid air.

Omar works as a construction laborer on the Panama Canal under the cruel and racist foreman Miller.

Ada spots a sick man collapsed in the street and organizes bystanders to carry him to a hospital train.

John Oswald approaches Ada after witnessing her help the sick man and offers her a nursing position.

Valentina and Joaquín travel to Gatún and read the government letter ordering the entire village to relocate.

Ada begins working as Marian Oswald's nurse and the two women quickly form a genuine friendship.

Marian's fever spikes violently and Ada races to the commissary to obtain anti-fever medication before the doctor arrives.

Ada returns to the Oswald home to discover that Marian has died in her absence.

Cook Antoinette blames Ada for Marian's death and reports to John that Ada abandoned her patient.

Miller forces a brutal wage bet on a worker on payday and the man dies from overwork as Omar watches.

The townspeople of Gatún stage a large public protest, sitting arm-in-arm in front of their homes to block the bulldozers.

Ada receives a letter about her sister's recovery and purchases a train ticket home to Barbados.

John Oswald watches the first vessel officially pass through the completed Panama Canal.

The Great Divide follows several ordinary people caught up in the construction of the Panama Canal in the early twentieth century. Francisco, a Panamanian fisherman, opposes the canal while his son Omar becomes one of its laborers, working under a brutal American foreman. Ada Bunting, a young Barbadian woman, travels to Panama seeking work and is hired to nurse Marian Oswald, a white American woman trapped in an unhappy marriage in a foreign country. Back in Barbados, Ada's mother Lucille desperately tries to fund surgery for her sick daughter Millicent, while in the village of Gatún, a woman named Valentina organizes her community to resist the government's order to relocate their homes for the canal. These storylines converge as Marian dies, the protest in Gatún unfolds, and each character is changed by the canal's sweeping reach across lives and land.

The headline story of Panama's canal and its human cost.

Lucille in Barbados struggles to write a letter to Ada, reflecting on their past life on the sugar estate.

Francisco recalls his stormy marriage to Esme and the morning she vanished in his boat, leaving him alone with Omar.

Omar wakes ill with malaria in a hospital, uncertain how or when he arrived there.

Millicent and Lucille read Ada's letter aloud together and are relieved to learn she has found work.

Millicent sneaks to the sugar estate to spy on her father Henry, standing directly in his line of sight.

Valentina calls a meeting of all Gatún residents at the local church to organize a response to the relocation orders.

Joaquín carries the townspeople's written protest to the presidential palace but is turned away by armed guards.

John is informed of Marian's death, and newspaper reporters publish an obituary that omits her academic degrees and professional work.

Ada gathers flowers for Marian's funeral and runs into Omar, sharing news of her sister Millicent's illness in Barbados.

Valentina travels alone to the city to ask a newspaper office to cover the planned Gatún protest.

Lucille fails to sell her sewing work at the market and is told by the vestryman to seek help from Henry Camby.

Lucille walks to the Camby estate to ask Henry for financial help and his wife Gertrude spits in her face.

Omar attends Marian Oswald's funeral and speaks with Ada, who fears her sister will share Marian's fate.

Strangers from neighboring villages arrive at the Gatún protest, swelling the crowd far beyond Valentina's expectations.

Omar enrolls in a teacher training course while Ada begins an apprenticeship with a local doctor in Barbados.

Behind the main narrative, a network of quieter but significant events reveals the full human landscape of the novel. In Barbados, Ada's mother Lucille struggles with poverty and the secret of her daughters' parentage, while her ill daughter Millicent grows curious about the white father she has never known. In Gatún, Valentina methodically builds a grassroots resistance movement, gathering neighbors, drafting letters, and seeking press coverage for her cause. In the Oswald household, Marian's death ripples outward, shaping the behavior of John, Antoinette, and Ada in the days that follow. Lucille's desperate attempt to seek help from her daughters' father ends in humiliation, and a resolution comes from an unexpected source. The pool closes with a glimpse of the future, as Omar and Ada each find new purpose in the wake of the canal's upheaval.

The supporting stories that surround and deepen the canal's impact.

Ada exits the ship undetected and boards a train, but flees into the woods after receiving unwanted attention from a stranger.

Francisco learns Omar has taken a job on the canal construction and cries out that his son has become one of them.

Henry sees Millicent on the Camby estate grounds and realizes he had mistaken her for the ghost of her mother Lucille.

Henry reflects that his wife Gertrude's deep rage toward Lucille is rooted in possessiveness rather than love.

Francisco contemplates how US-backed Panamanian independence was engineered solely to secure American control of a canal route.

Omar is released from the hospital after recovering from malaria and returns home to find Francisco silent and unreachable.

Omar recognizes Ada's voice outside the commissary and maneuvers himself so their encounter appears accidental.

Henry watches Lucille turned away from his estate by Gertrude and resolves to do nothing to help her or Millicent.

John drinks heavily after Marian's death and acknowledges for the first time her true intellectual worth and her kindness.

Omar confronts Miller directly after the worker's death and Miller responds by striking Omar across the face.

Doña Ruiz visits Francisco, who decides to forgive Omar and sets out immediately to find his son at the construction site.

Francisco walks through the crowded construction site calling Omar's name and finds that no worker there recognizes his son.

Ada hides in a railway boxcar after Antoinette reports to John that she had abandoned Marian on the day of her death.

A Black doctor sent from the Camby estate arrives at Lucille's home and drains the fluid from Millicent's lungs without surgery.

Ada and Omar say a sad farewell at the train station, and Omar returns home to find Francisco greeting him with a warm hello.

Beneath the surface of the main plot, The Great Divide is driven by a series of private revelations and pivotal choices that reshape each character's understanding of themselves and their world. Ada's journey begins with a dangerous solo escape, and Omar's path is defined by a growing awareness of the injustice he witnesses daily on the construction site. The novel's Barbadian subplot turns on secrets of parentage and race, as Henry is confronted by the consequences of his choices and Lucille finds herself utterly at the mercy of a woman's spite. Francisco's arc moves from bitter estrangement toward forgiveness, catalyzed by his invisible journey into a worksite where his own son is a stranger to the crowd. These turning points accumulate until each character faces a moment of reckoning, and the novel closes not with triumph but with the quiet dignity of people who endured, adapted, and found one another.

The key decisions, discoveries, and emotional shifts that change every character.