Contributors to this volume hold that catastrophes in Haiti and the wider Caribbean are produced by political and economic structures, and that the stories told afterwards decide who receives help. The editors open with the statistical fight over how many people died in the 2010 earthquake, where rival death tolls issued by the Haitian government and by American agencies had direct consequences for the size of the aid effort, and they use it to show what counting fails to reach. In its place the book gathers ethnography, literary criticism, art history and testimony, listening to Haitians who were sidelined during relief and reconstruction. Essays reach out to Puerto Rico, Guyana and other non-sovereign societies where the aftermath of disaster brought privatisation and austerity. One chapter follows the ground beneath the Caracol industrial park back through sisal and sugar plantations to peasants who regard that land as sacred.