Pezzullo takes up the stretch of the early 1990s when Haiti sat near the center of international attention. Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist priest, won the presidency and was pushed out by the military within a year, and before long thousands of impoverished Haitians were reaching Florida in improvised boats.

The account turns on Washington's response. Restoring Aristide became a stated priority of the incoming Clinton administration in early 1993; by that autumn, backers of the ruling junta had succeeded in facing down the United States over the arrival of the USS Harlan County and the UN peacekeepers it carried.