After disappearing in a hurricane, local peasant Liborio returns as a prophet with healing powers. People begin to congregate by his side and move to the mountains to live in total freedom, but everything changes when the invading US Marines want to disarm and disband the newly-formed community.

Unfolding from multiple perspectives, Liborio reveals the true story of an enigmatic Afro-Dominican folk hero and his commune of followers at the birth of a new religious movement. Both grittily realistic and beguilingly mystical, this ravishing debut gradually exposes the lesions of colonialism.