Fouchard's subject is Saint-Domingue, the wealthiest colony any European power held in the Americas, from its earliest decades through the closing years of the eighteenth century, where his attention tightens.

At the center are fugitives from the plantations, maroons of both sexes, and leaders whose names have gone largely uncelebrated: Boukman, Macandal, Polydor. Through cunning, persistence and bloody sacrifice, Fouchard argues, they made the founding of the Haitian republic possible.

The story unfolds against the routine of enslaved life and the political currents running between the colony and Europe.