Panama and Beyond, Letters from Cuba, from the Panama Canal Zone, and by Steamship to and from Panama, 1907 to 1914

by Debby Detering, William Richard Hobby (Contributor), Daniel Charles Potter (Contributor)

Sail into a bygone era on steamship journeys along our Atlantic and Pacific coasts, the work of a junior engineer on the yet-to-be opened Panama Canal, the once-in-a-lifetime vacations of his independent and curious cousin, an uncle who has never been farther west than upper New York State, and a New England school teacher/farmer’s wife visiting4 her sister on a San Diego ranch.
The letters they mail home turn up a century later and send William’s granddaughter on a vicarious journey in their footsteps. What in a Costa Rica port was manufactured in Vermont? How is a tugboat like Mark Twain’s donkey? A single sentence about the Sosostress wreck exhumes three versions of its story. Frigatebirds sleep while flying, mangroves are essential to planetary health, and possibly a postage stamp blocks Captain Eads’ design for a ship railway in Nicaragua.

229 pages, Paperback

Published June 1, 2019