Cristina Henriquez

Cristina Henríquez is the author of four books including, most recently, The Great Divide, which was a TODAY Show Read With Jenna Pick, a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection, and one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. It has been longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, was a finalist for the Heartland Booksellers Award, and was a Goodreads Choice Award nominee.

Henríquez’s novel The Book of Unknown Americans was a New York Times Notable Book of 2014 and one of Amazon’s 10 Best Books of the Year. It was the Daily Beast Novel of the Year, a Washington Post Notable Book, an NPR Great Read, a Target Book of the Month selection, and was chosen one of the best books of the year by BookPage, Oprah.com, and School Library Journal. It was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Henriquez is also the author of The World In Half (a novel), and Come Together, Fall Apart: A Novella and Stories, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection.

Cristina’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Glimmer Train, The American Scholar, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and AGNI, and the anthology This is Not Chick Lit: Original Stories by America’s Best Women Writers. Her work has been featured in the Best American Short Stories 2018 and on Symphony Space Selected Shorts.

Her non-fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, Real Simple, The Oxford American, and Preservation, as well as in the anthologies State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America and Thirty Ways of Looking at Hillary: Women Writers Reflect on the Candidate and What Her Campaign Meant.

She is the 2024 recipient of the 21st Century Award given by The Chicago Public Library Foundation, was a 2020 Fiction judge for the National Book Awards, has been a guest on National Public Radio, and is a recipient of the Alfredo Cisneros Del Moral Foundation Award, a grant started by Sandra Cisneros in honor of her father.

Cristina earned her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

THE GREAT DIVIDE

A gorgeous, sweeping epic that draws together a truly
unforgettable cast of characters. I loved it.
— Ann Napolitano

It is said that the canal will be the greatest feat of engineering in history. But first, it must be built. For Francisco, a local fisherman who resents the foreign powers clamoring for a slice of his country, nothing is more upsetting than the decision of his son, Omar, to work as a digger in the excavation zone. But for Omar, whose upbringing was quiet and lonely, this job offers a chance to finally find connection.

Ada Bunting is a bold sixteen-year-old from Barbados who arrives in Panama as a stowaway alongside thousands of other West Indians seeking work. Alone and with no resources, she is determined to find a job that will earn enough money for her ailing sister’s surgery. When she sees a young man—Omar—who has collapsed after a grueling shift, she is the only one who rushes to his aid.

John Oswald has dedicated his life to scientific research and has journeyed to Panama in single-minded pursuit of one goal: eliminating malaria. But now, his wife, Marian, has fallen ill herself, and when he witnesses Ada’s bravery and compassion, he hires her on the spot as a caregiver. This fateful decision sets in motion a sweeping tale of ambition, loyalty, and sacrifice.

Searing and empathetic, The Great Divide explores the intersecting lives of activists, fishmongers, laborers, journalists, neighbors, doctors, and soothsayers—those rarely acknowledged by history even as they carved out its course.

Reader’s Guide

Arturo Rivera was the owner of a construction company in Pátzcuaro, México. One day, as his fifteen-year-old daughter, Maribel, is helping him at a work site, she sustains an injury that casts doubt on whether she’ll ever be the same again. And so, leaving all they have behind, the Riveras come to America with a single dream: that in this country of great opportunity and resources, Maribel can get better.

When Mayor Toro, whose family is from Panamá, sees Maribel in a Dollar Tree store, it is love at first sight. It’s also the beginning of a friendship between the Rivera and Toro families, whose web of guilt and love and responsibility is at this novel’s core.

Woven into their stories are the testimonials of men and women who have come to the United States from all over Central and Latin America. Their journeys and their voices will inspire you, surprise you, and break your heart.

Suspenseful, funny and warm, rich in spirit and humanity, The Book of Unknown Americans is a new American classic.

Reader’s Guide

Miraflores has never known her father, and until now, she’s never thought that he wanted to know her. She’s long been aware that her mother had an affair with him while she was stationed with her then husband in Panama, and she’s always assumed that her pregnant mother came back to the United States alone with his consent. But when Miraflores returns to the Chicago suburb where she grew up, to care for her mother at a time of illness, she discovers that her mother and father had a greater love than she ever thought possible, and that her father had wanted her more than she could have imagined.

In secret, Miraflores plots a trip to Panama, in search of the man whose love she hopes can heal her mother—and whose presence she believes can help her find the pieces of her own identity that she thought were irretrievably lost. What she finds is unexpected, exhilarating, and holds the power to change the course of her life completely.

In gorgeous, shimmering prose, Cristina Henríquez delivers a triumphant and heartbreaking first novel: the story of a young woman reconciling an existence between two cultures and confronting a life of hardship with an endless capacity to learn, love, and forgive.

NEWS for THE GREAT DIVIDE

• A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club pick
  Watch clips of Cristina’s first and second appearances on the TODAY show

• One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024

• A New York Times Editor’s Choice selection
  “An elegant thrill of a novel … the sweep of this story is as vast as the project it covers.”

• Profile in the New York Times: The Panama Canal Redrew the World’s Map. A Novel Explores the Lives It Changed

• Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize

• Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee for Best Historical Fiction

• Finalist for the 2024 Heartland Booksellers Award

• A March Indie Next pick
  “The building of the Panama Canal is the backdrop of The Great Divide, paired with the omniscient and wondrous writing of Cristina Henríquez. This is a book of great ebb and flow as the richness of varying characters intersect.”
  —Kristy Creager, Mitzi’s Books, Rapid City, SD

• A LibraryReads pick
  “An atmospheric and compelling novel filled with characters that leap off the page and into readers’ hearts.”
  —Rachel Rooney, Mid-Continent Public Library, MO

• A best-of-the-month pick from Amazon, TIME, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times

• New York Times Book Review Summer Reading list
  “[Henriquez’s] focus is not on the outsiders intent on reshaping the isthmus but on the local people whose lives — and livelihoods — will be reshaped in the process.

• Review in the Boston Globe
  “The array of languages, voices, stories, and cultures in this book is phenomenal... Great historical fiction has to be gripping to work, fusing fact and fiction to deliver information while still keeping readers glued to the pages and invested in the characters. Henríquez accomplishes that and much more here, delivering a sweeping epic that shines a light on the small but very significant kind of stories that were lost in the shadow of a monumental construction.”

• Review in The Washington Post
  “The Great Divide joins novels by Julia Alvarez, Sandra Cisneros and Gabriel García Márquez in deepening the people’s literary history of Latin America. Henríquez is a master of prose whose enchanting words capture the landscape.”

• Interview in the Chicago Tribune
  “[An] epic about love and violence that, seamlessly, holds history in balance. It’s also one of the buzziest new books of spring.”

• Review in the Star Tribune
  “Readers will care about these characters... This absorbing novel expresses the experiences of those often overlooked by dominant narratives.”

• A Book of the Month add-on selection
  “Sweeping and polyphonic…. For any readers who look to historical fiction for an immersive and transportive experience, look no further!”

Speaking engagements:
Madeleine Denman, Penguin Random House Speakers Bureau
mdenman@penguinrandomhouse.com

Literary agent:
Julie Barer, The Book Group
julie@thebookgroup.com

Film agent:
Jason Richman, United Talent Agency
RichmanJ@unitedtalent.com

Publicity/Media inquiries:
Sonya Cheuse, HarperCollins/Ecco
Sonya.Cheuse@harpercollins.com