Madison Smartt Bell is the author of fifteen works of fiction, including Master of the Crossroads; All Souls' Rising; Save Me, Joe Louis; Doctor Sleep; Soldier's Joy; and Ten Indians. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his family and teaches at Goucher College.

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.”