Girard centers his account on Jean-Bertrand Aristide's political career, the calculations he made, the concessions he accepted, and the long negotiation he conducted with the Clinton administration. Rather than place one leader in the right, Girard weighs what each man needed and the moral claims each pressed against the other.

The method gives both sides substance. Aristide and Clinton appear with their constituencies behind them, and the bargaining between them reads as consequential rather than procedural. At the book's core sit the confrontation itself and the foreign-policy machinery running between Haiti and the United States.

Around that core Girard also sketches Haiti as it stood at the time of writing, setting out with unusual clarity the tensions that built toward the violence of recent years and Aristide's removal from office.