Against All Gods (A Star-book)

The Suez Canal: 88 miles long and 260 feet wide, hacked by hand through the sun-baked Egyptian desert -- a spectacular symbol of French power created by the untiring commitment and vision of just one man, Vicomte Ferdinand De Lesseps. Single-handed he faced seemingly impossible odds -- the ravages of nature, the perfidy of the ruling Pashas, the opposition of his own Emperor.\nBut for Tony Hamilton, English Consular Official and De Lesseps' political enemy, the problems are more personal... Torn by his admiration for the indestructible Frenchman, he is further distracted from his patriotic duty by the bewitching seventeen-year-old Oriana Ducelle, whose reckless emotion is more than a match for Tony's reluctant propriety. Among the alien sands their passion burns with a white-hot heat....