Irresistible — Mirna Pierce

IRRESISTIBLE: Joelle and the bittersweet saga of the Panama Canal is the second novel in Mirna Pierce's Panama Canal trilogy based on the 34-year history of building one of the SEVEN WONDERS OF THE MODERN WORLD -- THE PANAMA CANAL. IRRESISTIBLE continues the historical saga that began in 1880 with sweeping panaromas in INSEPARABLE, the "Gone with the Wind" of the Americas, about the failures and triumphs that marked the dramatic history of the building of this marvelous engineering feat -- a canal from Atlantic to Pacific -- from 1880 until August of 1914 -- and which even today influences the commerce of the world and the lives of people in many parts of the globe. IRRESISTIBLE begins at the turn of the century. The year is 1901. Two decades have gone by of failures to build the French dream of a canal from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific across Panama. Torn from her lush tropical home on the skirts of Ancon Hill, lovely and aristocratic Joelle Delaville is little more than a French colonial schoolgirl when she is swept into the glitter of Parisian society and into the arms of bold Captain Michael Bainbridge, the man who awakens in her daring desires . . . but refuses to exchange an adventurer's freedom for her innocent hand. Joelle returns brokenhearted to Panama to find her adopted homeland deep in civil war - the Thousand Days War, a war that would bring consequences to bear on the potential of a future canal. Joelle's hope of raising the child born of one night of passion in Paris is crushed when she is abducted and then held hostage by a vengeful rebel leader. Forced to survive in the treacherous hills and jungles of Panama, using all the skills she had learned about nature from her botanist and engineer father, Joelle is sustained only by her belief that the man she loves will leave behind the international political intrigues he's involved in because of a possible future canal in Panama, and find her, save her from the savagery of war and soar with her once more to the thrill of their IRRESISTIBLE love.