Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [0]
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Praise
Fort de Joux, France - October 1802
PREFACE
Part One - DEBAKMEN
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Fort de Joux, France - October 1802
Part Two - RAVINE À COULEUVRE
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Fort de Joux, France - November 1802
Part Three - LA CRÊTE À PIERROT
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Fort de Joux, France - March 1803
Part Four - THE ROOTS OF THE TREE
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Dessounen: Fort de Joux, France - April 1803
Weté Mò anba Dlo Haiti - April 1825
GLOSSARY
CHRONOLOGY OF HISTORICAL EVENTS
ORIGINAL LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Madison Smartt Bell
Copyright Page
Thanks to David Baker for patient, painstaking, and skillful work on these long and sometimes trilingual manuscripts.
Without Dan Frank, Jane Gelfman, Altie Karper, Suzanne Williams, and Sonny Mehta, I’d never have rolled this stone to the top of the hill.
To those who’ve helped me on my ways in and out of Haiti—Rolph Trouillot, Jean de la Fontaine, Gesner Pierre, Faubert Pierre, Lóló Beaubrun, Manzè Beaubrun, Guidel Présumé, Alex Roshuk, Handy Laporte, Robert Stone, Lyonel Trouillot, Michelle Karshan, Patrick Delatour, Eddy Lubin, Rachel Beauvoir, Nicolas Bussenius, Uriode Orelien, Abraham Joanis, Evelyne Trouillot, Rodney Saint Eloi, Georges Castera, Père Max Dominique, Père William Smarth, Marie-Claudette Edoissaint, Laetitia Schutt, Gerard Barthelmy, Richard Morse, Anne-Carinne Trouillot, Max Beauvoir, Bob Shacochis, Myrieme Millot-Colas, Ephèle Milcé, Tequila Minsky, Bob Corbett ak tout moun nan Corbettland, tout moun nan Morne Calvaire, tout moun nan Lakou Jisou—m’ap di gran mèsi.
To the spirit of Père Antoine Adrien, who put every day of his life on the line for Haiti’s history and Haiti’s future, benediksyon pou moun k’ap goumen pou la jistis.
The stone that the builder refused will always be the head cornerstone.
—Bob Marley
Praise for Madison Smartt Bell’s
The Stone That The Builder Refused
“Extraordinary. . . . Exhilarating. . . . Bell’s supple, exact prose . . . [has] hallucinatory force. . . . Almost every moment is full, like some great narrative painting, alive with the detail that puts you on the road or in the house where some murder or meeting is about to take place. . . . These books do what novels are meant to do: they propose their own vivid and inexorable history.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A towering work. . . . Bell has emerged as one of the most brilliant, artistic and daring historical novelists of our time, creating a vividly imagined, nearly week-by-week fictionalization of the bloody birth of a nation, synthesizing and transforming an enormous amount of research into tales that are extraordinarily empathetic and rich in emotions that range from hatred, fury, terror and bloodlust to humor, joy, ecstasy and love. He has brought messianic Toussaint L’Ouverture—a courageous warrior, master strategist and heroic champion of human rights—to vital and poignant life as no one has ever done before. . . . In sum, Bell has created that rarest of works, a masterpiece.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Bell uses fiction to take us where history books cannot go—into the thoughts and fears of the revolutionaries and plantation owners and those in between who got caught up in the riots and bloodshed. . . . These three novels succeed in redefining American cultural history in powerful and profound ways.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“Epic. . . . Heartbreaking. . . . Absorbing. . . . Strikingly rich detail. . . . Riveting and immensely satisfying. . . . A masterly piece of work.”
—Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“Astonishing. . . . Bell’s immersion in the world