Sabina Murray's "Balboa" imagines the explorer in 1513 as he climbs a ridge on the Isthmus of Panama and sees the Pacific Ocean. "Balboa," Murray writes from the explorer's point of view, "is that divining line between the modern and the primitive." In this story, from her collection Tales of the New World, Murray investigates the meaning of civilization, discovery, and the foreign, and makes us consider the intersection of power and desire.
