Roumain's novel follows Manuel, a young peasant who comes back to Fonds Rouge after years cutting cane in Cuba. He finds the village burnt dry by drought and split by a family quarrel, its people slack with resignation and leaning on ritual for relief. Against that he sets what he learned abroad: water can be found, and finding it is worth nothing unless the villagers agree to dig for it and share it.

Dash's introduction places the book in a line of Haitian peasant fiction reaching back to the turn of the century, and separates Roumain from contemporaries who made rural life into exotic spectacle. The title comes from a Creole phrase for the peasant who waters the fields, and carries the book's insistence that people can impose their will on their circumstances. The fable stays credible because Manuel's parents, and his courtship of Annaise, have lives of their own.