Dayan begins from a reversal. Rather than reading Haiti through the French revolution, she reads the revolution from Haitian ground, where the promise of liberty and equality met the hard facts of property, labour and race. The stories of Toussaint, Christophe and Dessalines have been told and retold in Haiti itself, and they conflict according to who is telling them and to what end; Dayan turns away from mainstream historical accounts toward what Haitians wrote about themselves.

Much of the book dwells on figures who were either idealized or brutalized, and on scenes where illicit identities surface: Rochambeau inheriting Toussaint's household of women, the woman known as Defilee gathering up the pieces of Dessalines's body, Ezili as a spirit of love who forbids it, among others.

Underlying the reconstruction is vodou, taken not as exotica but, following a remark of Sidney Mintz that stayed with her, as a set of postulates about reality.