“Panama” is the story of the young French engineering graduate, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, who becomes chief engineer of the largest construction project in the history of the world within six months of arriving in Panama. It shows how his energy, audacious brilliance, determination  and Machiavellianism lead him to trick the US Congress to abandon plans for a Nicaraguan route across the isthmus, and to persuade President Theodore Roosevelt to support a revolution for Panamanian independence from Colombia, which Philippe himself had instigated and financed.

In the story there is a deeply repulsive antagonist - John Tyler Morgan, the racist US senator for Alabama - who successfully provides the nail to the coffin of the nearly bankrupt French project in Panama in order to favour the Nicaraguan route, which is backed by the banker, JP Morgan senior, the Vanderbilts et al.

The story is enriched by a partially thwarted romance with the lovely Pauline, the widow of a French engineer, and which will provide an uplifting emotional high in the resolution of the story. The horrendous social consequences of the project - 25,000 workers’ deaths - are represented by the poor black family of Isaac and Rebecca Turner, who emigrate from Alabama under a deportation scheme of Senator Morgan, and whose family is decimated by disease and the appalling conditions present in the isthmus, only to have the surviving members of the family later saved by Philippe. Added to this, is the thread of the Panamanian revolutionaries and close friends of Philippe,  Dr Amador, who will become the first president of the Republic of Panama, and his wife, the fiery Maria.

Finally, as a backdrop to this story, is the largest bankruptcy in world history, the huge political corruption involved in it, the devastating consequences on the French middle classes, and the unedifying portrayal of a future President of France, Georges Clemenceau, fighting a duel in the dying days of the 19th Century.