Books by Madison Smartt Bell

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.

In the twenty-fourth volume of this distinguished anthology, Madison Smartt Bell chooses twenty-one distinctive pieces of short fiction to tell the story of the South as it is now. This is a South that is still recognizable but no longer predictable. As he says, "to the traditional black and white recipe (ever a tricky and volatile mixture) have been added new shades and strains from Asia and Central and South America and just about everywhere else on the shrinking globe." Just as Katrina brought out into the open all the voices of New Orleans, so the South is now many things, both a distinctive region and a place of rootlessness. It''s these contradictions that Madison Smartt Bell has captured in this provocative and moving collection of stories. Here you''ll find the well-known-Wendell Berry, Elizabeth Spencer, Jill McCorkle-alongside those writers just making their debuts, in stories that show the South we always thought we knew, making itself over, and over.

A Vietnam vet returns to rural Tennessee in this acclaimed novel from the National Book Awardnominated author of Save Me, Joe Louis. After the horrors of Vietnam, Thomas Laidlaw returns to his home in rural Tennessee where he spends his days raising sheep and growing vegetables. At night he likes to roam the quiet countryside and practice his banjo, revelling in the roots music he finds so grounding. Over time, he resumes his friendship with Rodney Redmon, a fellow vet and childhood friend scarred not only by the wages of war, but also by the deep wounds of racism. As the two friends piece together a new life as civilians, they also piece together a band with the addition of a fiddler. Through a masterful accumulation of details, Bell brings his story to a fever pitch, concluding in ';an unexpected, if powerful, finale' (Publishers Weekly). ';This important, insightful novel' (Library Journal) proves once again that ';every sentence [Bell] writes is a joy. His power is exhilarating' (The New Yorker). ';Bell's impressive talents as a writer, which include endowing settings with the significance of character, and a patient, compassionate probing of injured souls, are on full display.' Publishers Weekly

The Stone that the Builder Refused is the final volume of Madison Smartt Bell’s masterful trilogy about the Haitian Revolution–the first successful slave revolution in history–which begins with All Souls'' Rising (a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award) and continues with Master of the Crossroads.  Each of these three novels can be read independently of the two others; of the trilogy, The Baltimore Sun has said, “[It] will make an indelible mark on literary history–one worthy of occupying the same shelf as Tolstoy’s War and Peace.”