Panama

Paris, 1892. American historian Henry Adams, grandson of one president and great-grandson of another, is looking for Miriam Talbott, a young American student. Miriam is alive in ways Adams can scarcely remember being, but when he goes looking for her, she disappears. When another woman's body is fished out of the Seine and identified as hers, Adams becomes embroiled in the police's attempt to identify the body and in the Panama Canal scandal that threatens to engulf France.

Adams' search leads him into the darker reaches of Paris, into a political world as impenetrable and threatening as the jungles of Panama. The dead body, Miriam Talbott, and the information he uncovers are the keys to the mystery -- but before the truth is discovered, more than one person is killed, and Adams not only endangers his life, but potential U.S. interests in the canal.

Eric Zencey's suspenseful, brilliant novel offers an exquisite balance of intrigue and history -- and a provocative view of a world teetering on the brink of modernity.