So many of the events in this biography sound like out and out adventure fiction. He enlisted as a common soldier and when the French Revolution briefly swept away race as a bar, he rose to the rank of what would be considered today a four star general-commanding at one point over 50,000 troops-and was a genuine hero. Son of a marquis and a slave, born in Haiti, who his own father pawned into slavery, then redeemed and brought to Paris. But I didn't know about his father Alex Dumas. I knew of his son, who wrote the play that was the basis for Camille and Verdi's La Traviata. I knew that this 19th century author was both French and black-yet nevertheless celebrated even in his lifetime. I haven't read his books, but I've watched several adaptations and homages to them, everything from toons to allusions on Star Trek. I'm sure a lot of people are going to think the same thing reading this biography: "How in the world did I not know about this man?" Everyone knows Alexandre Dumas, père-or at least knows his The Three Musketeers. But it is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son. The Black Count is simultaneously a riveting adventure story, a lushly textured evocation of 18th-century France, and a window into the modern world’s first multi-racial society.
Enlisting as a private, he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution in an audacious campaign across Europe and the Middle East – until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat. Yet, hidden behind these swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: the real hero was the son of a black slave - who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time. Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas was briefly sold into bondage but made his way to Paris where he was schooled as a sword-fighting member of the French aristocracy. The real-life protagonist of The Black Count, General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today yet with a story that is strikingly familiar, because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used it to create some of the best loved heroes of literature. Here is the remarkable true story of the real Count of Monte Cristo – a stunning feat of historical sleuthing that brings to life the forgotten hero who inspired such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
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