"Powerful, horrifying, and impressive. . . . No single work published in the last year matches the historical authority and gravitas of Bell's richly rewarding historical novel." (The Boston Globe)

When volume one of Madison Smartt Bell's trilogy, All Souls' Rising, was published in 1995, it was hailed as "one of the year's most substantial literary accomplishments" (The New York Times). Chronicling the beginning of the Haitian slave rebellion and the rise of Toussaint-Louverture-the charismatic former slave who led the revolt to become Haiti's great liberator- volume one closed just as the French, Spanish, and English governments began to recognize the true extent-and threat-of Toussaint's military genius. Now, in this powerfully imagined tale interwoven with the lives and destinies of blacks and whites, men and women, free and enslaved, Bell blends intense prose with themes of race and class that still resonate today.