Cristina Henríquez is best known to many as the author behind the modern classic The Book of Unknown Americans (2014). In it, Mexican teenager Maribel suffers a traumatic brain injury, forcing the Rivera family to move to the United States to secure medical care. A budding relationship with a neighbor boy, Panamanian immigrant Mayor Toro, sets in motion a series of events with profound repercussions for all involved. The Washington Post lauds The Book of Unknown Americans as “a ringing paean to love in general: to the love between man and wife, parent and child, outsider and newcomer, pilgrims and promised land.” Henríquez’s own Panamanian heritage and experiences also loom large in much of the author’s other work, including the short story collection Come Together, Fall Apart (2007) and novel The World in Half (2010). Her latest, The Great Divide, hits shelves in March 2024. It centers around the decade-long construction of the Panama Canal and the unsung workers who made this herculean feat of engineering possible.

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