In this first installment of his epic Haitian trilogy, Madison Smartt Bell brings to life a decisive moment in the history of race, class, and colonialism. The slave uprising in Haiti was a momentous contribution to the tide of revolution that swept over the Western world at the end of the 1700s. A brutal rebellion that strove to overturn a vicious system of slavery, the uprising successfully transformed Haiti from a European colony to the worlds first Black republic. From the center of this horrific maelstrom, the heroic figure of Toussaint Louverturea loyal, literate slave and both a devout Catholic and Vodouisantemerges as the man who will take the merciless fires of violence and vengeance and forge a revolutionary war fueled by liberty and equality.