A photograph of Jean Price-Mars sitting across from Nelson Rockefeller at the Haitian-American Institute in 1944 opens Verna's account of the decade or so after the occupation ended. She uses it to unsettle a historiography organised around American domination and Haitian resistance, arguing that the pairing is too blunt to explain what educated Haitians were actually doing.

From the late 1930s into the late 1940s, officials, intellectuals and members of the professional class actively sought American scholarships, expertise and institutional partnerships, expecting gains in status, in public health and schooling, and in Haiti's standing abroad. They were not a united group: indigenistes, Francophiles, socialists and admirers of the United States pursued incompatible ends through the same channels.

Verna's claim is that Haitians helped shape inter-American affairs rather than merely absorbing them, and that these years offer a case where outcomes were not settled in advance.