It’s January 1909. James Holt has just arrived in Panama, at the request of his much-admired cowboy colleague, fellow Rough Rider and United States President Theodore Roosevelt. Holt is not exactly sure why, but he has been promised a hefty sum for making the trip from the Dakota prairies to the Canal Zone. This money will enable him to rescue his beloved ranch from the clutches of the foreclosing bank.

Travel is difficult and lengthy in the early 1900s. Many miles (2,000 via train from North Dakota to New York; 2,000 more via ship from New York to Panama) and many days later, Holt arrives in Central America. Yet another train takes him from Colón to Culebra, where he is to meet Colonel George Washington Goethals of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, overseer of the canal’s construction. Holt has planned simply to attend a meeting with Colonel Goethals, hear his request, decline to assist, receive payment, and return to North Dakota, where his young daughter is waiting for him in her uncle’s care. 

"Sigmund Brouwer’s deft handling of this fascinating recounting of engineering marvels, medical discoveries and political maneuverings, coupled with his own brilliant development of both real and imagined characters, make this book a compelling and riveting read."

Panama is hot, sticky and loud as Holt surveys the canal’s construction. And for the French, original attempters of the Panama Canal, building a sea-level canal to connect the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific Ocean was a terribly costly operation, both as a failed investment and for the tens of thousands of lives lost. The French didn’t factor in the rolling landscape of the Panamanian isthmus, the tropical diseases like malaria and yellow fever (whose spread was little understood at that time), and sometimes turbulent bodies of water across the countryside. 

Yet, following the failure of the French attempts, interest in canal-building continued. The idea that weeks could be cut off transportation time when ships could pass across the isthmus, rather than sailing around South America and Cape Horn, captivated many, including Teddy Roosevelt. When Panama’s declared independence from Colombia via a relatively bloodless revolution succeeded, America was committed to building the canal, but this time with canal locks set at varying levels to combat the terrain.

Now Holt is in Panama, sitting in Goethals’ waiting room on an open-house Sunday, when anyone with a grievance can wait in line to see the official. Seated between a garrulous, complaining American woman and a young girl, Holt first decides to nap. Yet when he wakes up and begins reading one of the novels he’s brought along, the young girl, Saffire, starts chatting with him. He discovers that Saffire’s mother is missing, and no one will help her search for the woman. Despite Holt’s desire to return home, his sympathy for Saffire, who’s not much older than his own daughter, compels him to tell the colonel that he indeed will help him.

It seems that Holt has a mystery to uncover. Twenty-five million dollars of American money is missing, and Roosevelt’s relatives, and others, have been accused of malfeasance on an enormous scale. Roosevelt needs someone like Holt to investigate --- a man who is tough, honorable, not easily shaken or deflected. He and Goethals agree to an investigation into the missing money, while at the same time, he will be allowed to secretly search for clues into the disappearance of Saffire’s mother.

When I picked up SAFFIRE, I honestly had little memory of the happenings surrounding the creation of the Panama Canal, which I hadn’t revisited since my own school studies. Sigmund Brouwer’s deft handling of this fascinating recounting of engineering marvels, medical discoveries and political maneuverings, coupled with his own brilliant development of both real and imagined characters, make this book a compelling and riveting read. Holt’s experiences in 1900s-era Central America open a door for readers into a long-gone tropical environment where unseen dangers lurk around every corner; where men and women are not what they seem; and where power is held by some who are untrustworthy and others who are honorable.

Will Holt survive his trip to the Panama Canal? Read SAFFIRE and find out!