In 1995 Madison Smartt Bell published All Souls' Rising, earning both critical plaudits and a National Book Award nomination for this fictional account of Haiti's 18th-century slave rebellion. Now he continues the saga with Master of the Crossroads, the second volume of a projected trilogy. Even in his earlier narratives of contemporary America, the author has always been attuned to the byzantine politics of color. But by focusing on the figure of Toussaint Louverture--the black general who led the Haitians to independence only to be jailed for treason against the French Republic--Bell allows the politics of race to point him in unexpected and rewarding narrative directions. This is a big, muscular book, which derives much of its strength from the author's willingness to paint his tumultuous political and physical landscapes with broadly sweeping strokes. But it is also a work of surprising delicacy, whose finely drawn characters come to life with the minutest gesture or softly whispered word.

The crossroads herein are not merely literal but metaphorical. Yes, the former slaves and their courageous leader are pinned down in the island's remote interior, caught between the English forces and the Spanish army (their nominal yet treacherous ally). But more to the point, Haiti's intricate progress from slavery to freedom brings each of the characters to a crucial, defining moment of energy or introspection. And finally, swirling through the book like an island mist, is the voodoo figure of Mâit' Kalfou, or the "Master of the Crossroads." Straddling the worlds of the dead and the living, this ecstatic spirit may at any time inhabit the body of a believer: Between Legba and Kalfou the crossroads stood open now, and now Guiaou could feel that opened pathway rushing up his spine--passage from the Island Below Sea inhabited by les Morts et les Mystères. His hips melted into the movement of the drums, and the tails of the red coat swirled around his legs like feathers of a bird. With the other dancers he closed the small, tight circle around Legba and Kalfou, who faced each other as in a mirror: the shining surface of the waters, which divides the living from the dead. Throughout, Bell's captivating vision of the battlefield bears witness to his rigorous research. Still, the voodoo celebrations, and the author's sly evocation of their unexpected resonance, remain the novel's strongest moments. Why? They speak, perhaps, to the apocalyptic nature of the Haitian rebellion. And more intriguingly, they permit Bell to play with the deceptive nature of belief and reality--a move that, in an avowedly historical novel, hints at the ironic fluidity of history itself. --Kelly Flynn


From Publishers Weekly
Bell manages the bravura feat of bringing coherence and novelistic focus to the intrinsically complex history of Haiti's national liberator in this second installment in his brutal, sweeping trilogy. The first volume, All Souls' Rising, a National Book Award finalist, took the slave revolt in Haiti up to 1793, when the great leader Toussaint Louverture was consolidating power. Continuing his stunning historical fresco, Bell traces the intricate weave of Toussaint's campaigns with an intelligence and verve reminiscent of Shelby Foote's classic military histories, braiding his rich character studies into the larger scheme. Racial classification was a science in Haiti in the 18th century, and the subtlest variations in skin color determined the treatment each person received. Riau, Toussaint's godson, is an ex-slave. For him, the desire of the white planters to reintroduce slavery, and their fundamental racism, is evident, but Riau's hatred doesn't vitiate his humanity. Riau does trust Toussaint's secretary, a white doctor, Antoine H bert. A subplot running like a silver thread in the shadow of the war is H bert's quest for his mulatto mistress, Nanon, after she runs away from H bert's plantation with Choufleur, a sadistic mulatto planter and Nanon's former lover, who exploits the psychodynamics of slavery in a frightening erotic context. The faltering planter aristocracy is represented by Michel Arnaud, who returns to the island although his house and lands were torched in the first phase of the revolt. Arnaud's past is one of murderous cruelty. Now, he is slowly rehabilitating himself, thanks to Claudine, his wife, who suffers from possession by the darkest Vodou spirit, Baron Samedi. Bell continually integrates his history with the sacred Vodou landscape, and as events channel between crossroads, trances, dreams and bloodshed, this mesmerizing, disturbing saga of a half-forgotten war takes on the ominous outlines and biblical proportions of a prophetic vision. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The second installment in Bell's trilogy on the Haitian slave revolt of the 1790s (following All Souls' Rising) picks up the story in 1794, three years into the conflict. Toussaint Louverture, an itinerant herb doctor, has quickly risen through the ranks of the black militia to become supreme military commander of the island. Toussaint is a brilliant tactician who practices a form of horse-mounted blitzkrieg, racing his cavalry along narrow mountain trails in the dead of night to take the enemy by surprise. He is also an astute politician who shrewdly plays Haiti's numerous factions against one another to his own advantage. But the real key to Toussaint's power, according to Bell, is his mastery of the language of his oppressors. He generates an endless stream of carefully worded memos detailing his victories, often sitting up all night with a team of secretaries to compose them. It's as if the events themselves have no reality until they are put into words. As Toussaint perfects his white persona, Bell's core group of French colonials is increasingly drawn to the island's potent voodoo culture. What results is a superb historical novel that consistently surpasses the high standard set by All Souls' Rising. Highly recommended.-DEdward B. St. John , Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Bell began his historical trilogy about the slave revolt on Haiti with All Souls' Rising (1995), and now, in an even more dramatic and strongly crafted work, he continues the complex and tragic story of this embattled land, a microcosm of the West's greatest crimes and most stubborn conflicts. This powerfully imagined installment concentrates on Toussaint Louverture, a former slave and healer who became a great military leader and liberator. Bell begins in 1794, three years after the slaves' uprising and the massing of Toussaint's disciplined and loyal army, and continues to spin the interlocking tales of his magnetic characters, both fictional and historical, including Toussaint; Antoine, a French doctor, and Nanon, the mulatto woman he loves; Riau, a former slave and a man of deep spirituality; Claudine, a profoundly repentant slave owner; and Isabelle, an adventurous and generous Creole. Writing masterfully from diverse points of view and switching between the specific and the panoramic, Bell limns the subtleties of body language as deftly as he conjures the ambience of a household, town, or plantation and animates such malevolent forces as the political intrigue among the French, Spanish, and English, and the horrific hatred between blacks and mulattoes that has poisoned Haiti for more than two centuries. Just as practitioners of voodoo believe that the dead, the Invisible Ones, are among us, Bell knows that good and evil dwell side by side, and he balances his portraits of men and women at their demonic worst with scenes of friendship and love that transcend racial divisiveness. And even though this novel, like its predecessor, ends with the grim promise of yet more bloodshed, Bell brings children of many hues into his compelling universe, thus reminding his readers that life, and hope, abide. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


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 PUBLISHER

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.

SYNOPSIS

The second installment in his spellbinding trilogy, Master of the Crossroads is an extraordinary look at the Haitian Revolution of the 18th century.

Master of the Crossroads begins in 1794, when the colony of Saint Domingue, one of France's most valuable overseas possessions, was considered to be French only by name. A bloody revolt of the colony's African slaves had been raging since 1791 and the French population was at war with itself, because the wealthiest property owners--slaveowners of royalist bent--had invited an English protectorate. While the French revolutionaries defended themselves against the English invasion as best they could, the mountainous, inaccessible interior of the country was traveled by band of armed blacks in revolt against slavery. The band of revolutionaries was being led by a notorious black military leader, who proclaimed his name to be Toussaint L'Ouverture.

Bell writes of Toussaint L'Ouverture's campaign in stunning detail, incorporating third-person views of the revolutionary leader from the perspectives of the wide range of men and women whose paths he crosses on the culturally diverse island of Haiti.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Bell manages the bravura feat of bringing coherence and novelistic focus to the intrinsically complex history of Haiti's national liberator in this second installment in his brutal, sweeping trilogy. The first volume, All Souls' Rising, a National Book Award finalist, took the slave revolt in Haiti up to 1793, when the great leader Toussaint Louverture was consolidating power. Continuing his stunning historical fresco, Bell traces the intricate weave of Toussaint's campaigns with an intelligence and verve reminiscent of Shelby Foote's classic military histories, braiding his rich character studies into the larger scheme. Racial classification was a science in Haiti in the 18th century, and the subtlest variations in skin color determined the treatment each person received. Riau, Toussaint's godson, is an ex-slave. For him, the desire of the white planters to reintroduce slavery, and their fundamental racism, is evident, but Riau's hatred doesn't vitiate his humanity. Riau does trust Toussaint's secretary, a white doctor, Antoine H bert. A subplot running like a silver thread in the shadow of the war is H bert's quest for his mulatto mistress, Nanon, after she runs away from H bert's plantation with Choufleur, a sadistic mulatto planter and Nanon's former lover, who exploits the psychodynamics of slavery in a frightening erotic context. The faltering planter aristocracy is represented by Michel Arnaud, who returns to the island although his house and lands were torched in the first phase of the revolt. Arnaud's past is one of murderous cruelty. Now, he is slowly rehabilitating himself, thanks to Claudine, his wife, who suffers from possession by the darkest Vodou spirit, Baron Samedi. Bell continually integrates his history with the sacred Vodou landscape, and as events channel between crossroads, trances, dreams and bloodshed, this mesmerizing, disturbing saga of a half-forgotten war takes on the ominous outlines and biblical proportions of a prophetic vision. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

The second installment in Bell's trilogy on the Haitian slave revolt of the 1790s (following All Souls' Rising) picks up the story in 1794, three years into the conflict. Toussaint Louverture, an itinerant herb doctor, has quickly risen through the ranks of the black militia to become supreme military commander of the island. Toussaint is a brilliant tactician who practices a form of horse-mounted blitzkrieg, racing his cavalry along narrow mountain trails in the dead of night to take the enemy by surprise. He is also an astute politician who shrewdly plays Haiti's numerous factions against one another to his own advantage. But the real key to Toussaint's power, according to Bell, is his mastery of the language of his oppressors. He generates an endless stream of carefully worded memos detailing his victories, often sitting up all night with a team of secretaries to compose them. It's as if the events themselves have no reality until they are put into words. As Toussaint perfects his white persona, Bell's core group of French colonials is increasingly drawn to the island's potent voodoo culture. What results is a superb historical novel that consistently surpasses the high standard set by All Souls' Rising. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 6/15/00.]--Edward B. St. John , Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Jay Parini - New York Times Book Review

It's a brilliant performance, the work of an accomplished novelist of peculiar energy and courage...Bell's writing has never seemed more vivid, a flexible instrument that carries a huge plot forward without strain, calling little attention to itself, although its concreteness compels respect... the achievement here is considerable. 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 19th century.

Kirkus Reviews

A magnum opus in the making continues with this second in a trilogy (after All Souls' Rising, 1995) portraying the late—18th-century Haitian Revolution. This huge middle volume concentrates on the years 1794—1801, though its narrative is framed by scenes in which"liberator" Toussaint L'Ouverture, later (1802) imprisoned in France, writes his"memoir" and looks back on his years of struggle. Bell offers masterfully detailed accounts of Toussaint's shifting allegiances (once an ally of Spain, he has since declared himself a French"Republican" inspired by that country's Revolution) and campaigns against British occupying troops, native rebels, and French aristocratic slave-owners. The figure of the liberator is most clearly shown in the image of him held by those he commands, encounters, or engages in battle—including his conflicted subordinates Riau and Maillart, his captive Dr. Antoine Hébert (a major figure in All Souls' Rising), and involved"colonials" of various national and ethnic origins. Given the inevitable preponderance of somewhat redundant military operations, one admires—and appreciates—the ingenuity with which Bell varies the story's content. The pervasiveness of miscegenation, for example, is seen to threaten marriages and reputations, while ruining innocent lives and, paradoxically, offering the stubbornly decent Hébert an unexpected chance at happiness. Powerful drama emerges in the complexities that bedevil the Arnaud sugar plantation (perhaps cursed by its mistress's vicious murder of a pregnant slave); the wretched figure of half-breed Jean Michel Fortier, whobetrays his heritageby becoming a slave-catcher; and the ingenuous"Moustique" ("mosquito"), a"baby priest" transfigured by his susceptibility to both the heavy rhythms of indigenous native religions and the insistent lure of the flesh. The tale climaxes memorably, with Toussaint triumphant, having destroyed or driven away his people's tormentors—yet doomed to be overtaken by the well-known events that Bell dutifully provides for us in an appended Chronology of Historical Events and selected Original Letters and Documents. A most impressive fusion of history and fiction, and easily the finest work of this still-young writer's splendid career.