Three short weeks...and fifteen-year-old Louis Martin would be on his way to France—deprived of fulfilling his dream of seeing the Panama Canal completed. Once in France with his cruel "cousin" Corbeau, there would be work—digging and plowing, twelve hours a day.  Would there be time then for him to study to become a doctor?

Here is the story of a young French orphan, Louis, and his dream of fighting the yellow-fever epidemic that raged across the Isthmus of Panama in 1905. The city of Ancon was overcome with panic. Americans were fleeing the Isthmus, just as the French had done sixteen years earlier—abandoning their dream of uniting the Atlantic and Pacific. Only one man, Dr. Gorgas, head of the hospital in that city of bedlam, could stop the panic. Louis saw his place beside the famous doctor in the war against the deadly mosquito—if only there were some way to remain on the Isthmus.

Into those last three weeks, before he was to leave for France, Louis crowded a lifetime of adventure. How he saved a train from disaster in the face of a flood, how his friend Juan Matteas inspired in him the belief that all dreams can become realities, makes spirited reading. Interwoven with threads of one of history's most fascinating events—the construction of the Panama Canal—this story will be read from cover to cover by every youngster lucky enough to get a copy!

From the dust jacket