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.”