This sweeping saga of a slave's quest for dignity and freedom is laid onto a vast canvas, portraying the Haitian revolution at the turn of the 19th century, that sparked a rebellion of 500 slaves about 40 miles northwest of New Orleans. Tete, the novel's protagonist, is born into slavery and arrives as a ten-year-old to work in Toulouse Valmorain's sugar plantation. Saddled with a sickly wife, Valmorain soon turns his attention to Tete. What follows is a lifetime of slavery that only brings incurable loss to Tete. Given the topic—the successful slave revolt on the island of Saint-Domingue that leads to the establishment of the independent Republic of Haiti—there is so much that Allende could have done to make this novel a tour-de-force. But she loses the plot while trying to tell too many stories. She brings in too many characters and though Tete is the central concern, the reader hardly gets to know her. Many of the characters are also unidimensional and stereotypical. Also, the third person narrative, bereft of dialogues makes for tedious reading.