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Master of the Crossroads (The Haiti Trilogy) Paperback – November 9, 2004

4.6 out of 5 stars 41

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Continuing his epic trilogy of the Haitian slave uprising, Madison Smartt Bell’s Master of the Crossroads delivers a stunning portrayal of Toussaint Louverture,  former slave, military genius and liberator of Haiti, and his struggle against the great European powers to free his people in the only successful slave revolution in history. At the outset, Toussaint is a second-tier general in the Spanish army, which is supporting the rebel slaves’ fight against the French.   But w hen Toussaint is betrayed by his former allies and the commanders of the Spanish army, he reunites his army with the French, wresting vital territories and manpower from Spanish control. With his army one among several factions, Toussaint eventually rises as the ultimate victor as he wards off his enemies to take control of the French colony and establish a new constitution.

Bell’s grand, multifaceted novel shows a nation, splintered by actions and in the throes of chaos, carried to liberation and justice through the undaunted tenacity of one incredible visionary.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Like the best and rarest of historical fictions, it goes well beyond the limitations of its setting. . . . With its exploration of racial hatred and the possibilities of reconciliation, it reads like a distillation of our own troubling times.” –The Washington Post

“A brilliant performance, the work of an accomplished novelist of peculiar energy and courage. . . . One puts down
Master of the Crossroads with a visceral knowledge of what it felt like to wage war in Haiti at the turn of the nineteenth-century.” –The New York Times Book Review

“Fiction in the grandest, most ambitious form. . . . Often the prose swaggers muscularly, reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy in the Border Trilogy; at other times it grows florid and surreal, in the vein of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” –
The Boston Globe
 
“Bell has taught historians a thing or two about what it means to have an intimate relationship with the past. Throwing caution to the wind, he has taken up a little-known but hugely important subject with passion and conviction.” –
Los Angeles Times

"A stunning achievement: marvelously crafted, meticulous in its historical detail, magnificent in its sweep." --
The Seattle Times

“[A] rich novel. . . . Its huge tapestry of scenes on battlefields and plantations, in ranches and churches, vibrantly reanimates Bell’s cast of real and fictional characters. . . . [Toussaint] is now one of the great characters in modern literature.” --
San Francisco Chronicle

"An absorbing and . . . majestic read. . . . [Bell] could not have chosen a more resonant setting than Haiti, nor found a more telling figure in whom to summon contemporary hopes and fears." --
Chicago Tribune

"This meticulously researched novel has the feel of a tableau by Delacroix: a generous swirl of individual and collective fervor." --
The New Yorker

"A fascinating tale. . . . Bell rides his near-perfect prose style through the terrain of the human psyche with astonishing ease." --
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Bell has learned well the lessons of [Tolstoy]. . . . [The] human drama of families, lovers and individual quests for self-knowledge envelops the reader in a brilliant blend of history and fiction.” --
The Portland Oregonian

"Atmospheric, well-researched, and well-written. . . . The unfolding of Haitian history is a fascinating tale, and Bell tells it with great skill." --
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette

“Provides a history lesson that tells us much about our present and, perhaps, constitutes a warning for our future.” --
The Miami Herald

“Read this novel to get a feel of life and death in the midst of one of the New World’s major political and military uprisings . . . in this trilogy we find the talented Madison Smartt Bell at the crossroads of his career.” --
The Dallas Morning News

From the Inside Flap

With the publication of All Souls' Rising, Madison Smartt Bell was immediately acclaimed as being "as remarkable a historical novelist as we have in this country" (Harold Bloom). The novel was a finalist for the National Book Award and was praised by writers as "a triumph of storytelling and inspired historical analysis" (Robert Stone) and by reviewers as "one of the year's most substantial literary accomplishments" (The New Yorker).

Now, with
Master of the Crossroads, Bell achieves an even greater accomplishment: he brings to life the rise to power of the great Haitian military general Toussaint Louverture and the story of the only successful slave revolution in history.Beginning in 1794, Toussaint led his troops to victory over English and Spanish invaders, over the French political establishment, and in a civil uprising for control of the infant island republic. He extended the ideological triumph of the French and American revolutions by offering universal liberty and human rights to all races.

In chronicling Toussaint's victory and its aftermath, Bell gives us a kaleidoscopic portrait of this extraordinary figure as seen through the eyes of the men and women whose paths he crossed. English, French, Spanish, and African--the intersection of peoples who inhabited this war-torn island creates a rich social canvas against which the astonishing story of Toussaint Louverture--his beliefs, passions, and compulsions--unfolds over the course of nine tumultuous years.

From the Hardcover edition.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group (November 9, 2004)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 752 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400078385
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400078387
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.23 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.19 x 1.7 x 8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 out of 5 stars 41

About the author

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Madison Smartt Bell
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Madison Smartt Bell is a critically acclaimed writer of more than a dozen novels and story collections, as well as numerous essays and reviews for publications such as Harper’s and the New York Times Book Review. His books have been finalists for both the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, among other honors.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
41 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Reviewed in the United States on January 28, 2013
Bell continues with the story of the Haitian slave revolution, and brings us into the 1800s. Considerably less bloody that the first book, Master of the Cross Roads provides us with an intimate look at the players and how they relate with each other. The historical facts are woven beautifully with Bell's imagination, and bring the story to life.

As with the first book, the most impressive part of this whole series is the care that Bell has taken to be culturally and historically relevant. My familiarity with haiti, albeit limited, allows me to follow the escapades around the island as the drama unfolds. The frequent and careful use of Kreyol, as well as the explanation in the back of the book of the spelling choices, is always artfully translated, but lets us hear the communication as it likely would have happened more than two hundred years ago.

For anyone interested in Haitian studies, African-American history, or American history, I highly recommend this trilogy. It's a great way of getting the history if you think reading a history book is too dry. Just keep in mind that this is based loosely on historical events, and artistic interpretation has taken place.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2016
Bell continued to navigate the complex history of the Haitian route to independence, masterfully telling the story through his choice of characters. Riau is one of my favorites, and I look forward to seeing his life develop. An epic meant to savor.
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Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2009
The first book was fantastic and this novel did not disappoint. Professor Bell did not skip a beat between novels. The flow is seamless and his storytelling ability was greatly appreciated! He develops his characters in an intriguing and complex manner. The attention to detail put sweat on my neck and mosquitoes on my arm...! Thank you again Professor Bell!!!
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Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2015
I read the first book in this series and was completely amazed at how good it was. Maybe my high expectations for the second part got the best of me but this was genuinely a huge letdown. I will read the last book in the trilogy because the good parts this book were really good and I got attached to the characters. The bad parts though were really bad. He said in 5 pages what could have been said in one, drew out a lot of scenes and it was very distracting constantly referencing the glossary.
Reviewed in the United States on November 26, 2016
Powerful, engaging, cinematic, in a literary sense, addictive. Thought provoking propulsive prose. Multiple, compelling narrators conveying their perspectives of multiple collisions at the crossroads.
Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2001
Note: This review was published November 12, 2000, in the Seattle Times ...
The American Revolution helped inspire the French Revolution, which in turn sparked the Haitian Revolution -- an uprising of Africans against the sugar plantation owners who wrung their fabulous wealth from slave labor. Madison Smartt Bell's projected trilogy of historical novels tells the least well known of these momentous late-18th-century stories.
Volume 1, "All Souls Rising," traced the gruesome first stages of the rebellion in the French colony then called Saint Domingue, from 1791 to 1794. One who hasn't read that harrowing masterpiece can still enjoy Volume 2, "Master of the Crossroads," based on events of the next five years. In this novel the revolution is well under way, but the outcome is still uncertain.
It's a tumultuous, confusing time. The Spanish, who own the eastern half of Saint Domingue, and the British, who are at war with France, separately hope to oust the French, subdue the blacks, and possess the island known worldwide as the Jewel of the Antilles. Among the islanders, the French blancs, or white colonials, have split into factions: the royalists who want to enslave the Africans again, and the revolutionaries who believe that liberty is a universal human right. Old disputes flare between native-born Haitians and immigrants, between mulatto plantation owners and poorer mulattos, between rivals among the island's 500,000 rebellious Africans and, more broadly, between members of the resident races - 64 in all, according to France's official classification of blends ranging from Blanc to Négre.
Toussaint Louverture, whose amazing career Jacob Lawrence memorialized in a series of paintings, is at the center of the storm. Small and tough, formerly a slave, he possesses such extraordinary charisma and talent for leadership that he can force, frighten, mystify, or cajole various factions into agreeing to work for peace. Toussaint unites the armed, roving bands of blacks who seized their liberty and transforms them into a well-disciplined army. A brilliant military tactician, he regularly defeats the English and Spanish forces. His political gifts make him a formidable negotiator with the French and a master at switching alliances at strategic moments. He alone seems committed to protecting, regardless of the race or ideology of their owners, the lives and property that survived the time of bloodbath and burning.
Toussaint's motives are endlessly debated in the book. People close to him believe that he is unselfishly devoted to securing liberty and peace for everyone. But rumors that he secretly plans to crown himself King and reinstate slavery multiply. We view him from the perspectives of many different characters, yet he remains a mystery: a presence with a godlike power in crisis, an inscrutable Master of the Crossroads like the voudou deity of crossings and change, Legba.
Readers who can tolerate a little disorientation from chaotic historical events swirling around an enigmatic hero will have a wonderful time with this novel. Many of the episodes are works of literary art, the Haitian landscape is superbly rendered, and the characters are fully realized and memorable. We come to care deeply about them: Doctor Hébert; his beloved mistress Nanon; his sister Elise and her smuggler husband Tocquet; Hébert's friends the French captain Maillart and the African captain Riau; the African soldier Guiaou who is Riau's rival in love; plucky, wanton Isabelle; the dreamy boy-priest Moustique; the elusive, fascinating Toussaint.
Since Bell can't string their stories on a clear historical plot-line (this history is a tangle) he braids the everyday incidents and subtleties of their private lives into a central strand to which scattered public events can be tied. The characters, absorbed in ordinary pursuits, are regularly pulled into battles and intrigues, then released again into personal concerns. The point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, and we open each new one with the pleasure of greeting an old friend.
Nobody achieves an overall view of events -- which is partly the point. Yet even patient readers will wish for an index of characters keyed to page numbers. It's hard to keep people named Dessources, Dessalines, Desrouleaux, and Desfourneaux straight in a complicated narrative (sometimes set in Descahaux) with a cast of hundreds that also includes Delahaye and Dieudonné. The author's memory itself falters - the girl Paulette is called Pauline for a while -- but the Glossary and Chronology help.
Without them "Master of the Crossroads" would still be a stunning achievement: marvelously crafted, meticulous in its historical detail, magnificent in its sweep.
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Top reviews from other countries

M.R. Jones
4.0 out of 5 stars History about one of our Neighbors
Reviewed in Canada on July 20, 2013
Information about a country that does not get much reading and study in the schools here,
A general understanding of why it is such a poor place and what the human relations were and are like in Haiti.