Madison Smartt Bell's weighty narrative moves with such direct power and provides such factual punch that Bell neophytes are certain to be exhaustively engaged, if somewhat lost – at least through the first 150 pages or so.
After that, the reward for hanging tough comes with every chapter, every turn of the page, every paragraph, nearly every line. "The Stone That the Builder Refused" is the third and climactic installment (following "All Soul's Rising" in 1995 and "Master of the Crossroads" in 2000) of a trilogy chronicling, in strikingly rich detail, the dramatic slave revolt in Haiti led by the black liberator Toussaint L'Ouverture.
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The Stone That the Builder Refused
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Madison Smartt Bell
Pantheon, 768 pages, $29.95
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Mixing the factual with the imagined, it's such a masterly piece of work, such an epic dramatization of African slaves rising up against their white masters in the French colony (then known as Saint Domingue), that I'd highly recommend toiling through the entire 2,000 pages to complete it all.
Those familiar with those two titles will find this final installment riveting and immensely satisfying as Bell focuses on the last two years of L'Ouverture's life, his triumphant struggle for a free Haiti, the rise of a new nation and society, and, finally, the heartbreaking compromises he is forced to make to save what he created.
The portrait painted here is of a legendary leader and the new world he created by sheer force of will. L'Ouverture emerges as the motivator and mouthpiece of freed black slaves, and eventually, ruler of all of Saint Domingue in the late 1700s.
But his proclamation of a new constitution to abolish slavery peeves Napoleon, prompting him to gather his troops and re-establish control and the profitable business of slavery. "All France has come against me," L'Ouverture says when he sees French warships being positioned off the coast of Saint Domingue. No kidding.
"The Stone That the Builder Refused" flashes forward to L'Ouverture's cruel imprisonment in a frigid cell in the French Alps. There, L'Ouverture ponders what could have been as he awaits the inevitable sentence.
Meanwhile, Bell weaves an intriguing web of covert actions, military maneuverings, battlefield confrontations, love affairs, betrayals and massacres as the French army, commanded by Napoleon's brother-in-law, Leclerc, attempts to obliterate L'Ouverture's government and restore slavery.
Characters both invented and historical appear and disappear. Like ghosts, some re-emerge from the previous novels. Narration is frequently interrupted by the voice of the former slave (now Toussaint's second-in-command) Riau, one of the book's more colorful characters. Others include L'Ouverture's sons, Placide and Isaac. (That only one declares himself his father's ally is an intriguing little twist.) There's the French doctor and slave sympathizer Antoine Hebert, and his attractive (and quite promiscuous) sister, Esther Tocquet.
The historical fact behind "The Stone That the Builder Refused" – this is considered the world's only successful slave revolt, at least on such a major scale – provides much of its emotional impact. But Bell's skill at expanding that historical fact into a consistently absorbing story makes this work accomplish something rare: excellence in both fiction and historical instruction.
© Fort Worth Star-Telegram
