Girard and Donnadieu piece together the first fifty years of Toussaint Louverture's life from plantation letters in Bordeaux and Nantes, notarial and parish records at Aix-en-Provence, and unpublished notes by his sons held in Puerto Rico, Paris and New York. Their findings are concrete: his parents Hippolyte and Pauline died of chest disease in 1774, so the father he invoked in 1802 was his godfather Pierre Baptiste; a half sister shipped separately from Benin turned up in the south of the colony, and her daughter later married his son. Accounts for the estates he leased as governor show sugar output far below prewar levels and a manager unable to pay the workers, which undercuts his claim that the colony had recovered. The silences in his past were partly his own doing, since he released the version of himself that suited the moment.