Michel's account of Charlemagne Peralte is frankly commemorative: its sections are cantos, and the guerrilla leader's road to execution is told as a Calvary with his mother as the grieving witness. It begins at Hinche on the Central Plateau, where he grew up as the youngest son of General Massena Peralte, served at mass under the priest who would later hear his confession in prison, and formed the attachment to his mother that carried him through the war.

The narrative turns on late July 1915: the killing of prisoners in Port-au-Prince, the lynching of President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam after crowds took him from the French legation, the execution of the hated post commander at Leogane where Peralte held authority, and the landing of the Marines at Bizoton that same afternoon.

The translator's introduction places him in a line from Louverture and Dessalines, and reads the occupation's methods as techniques the United States went on to use elsewhere. Documents are appended.