Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line
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by Martha A. Sandweiss

Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (February 5, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594202001
ISBN-13: 978-1594202001
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches

Reviewed by Thumper

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception across the Color Line written by Martha A. Sandweiss is a book about an episode in America's history that is hardly explored anymore, passing. Usually passing is a term used when a black person, who has a light color skin complexion is mistakenly identified as a white person. In Passing Strange there is a twist, I call it ’reverse passing’. Passing Strange is a true story of how a well respected white man, with some social standing, lead a double life as a black man in order to love and marry a black woman in the late 1800s. The story itself is highly intriguing. Passing Strange one significant failure is that Sandweiss in an effort to factually verify the story forgot to tell the story.

Clarence King was a notable figure in American society in the mid to late 1800. King was an explorer, geologist who contributed to the mapping of the American West. He was a popular writer and lecturer who was extremely well liked, a sought after guest for any high class social occasion. Alas, King had a huge secret. He was living a double life. On one hand he was a man-about-town, on the other he was James Todd, a black man who worked as a steel worker and a Pullman porter. Todd was married to Ada Copeland Todd, a black woman with whom he had three children. Clarence King managed to keep his life as James Todd a secret until Clarence King/James Todd died and everything came to a head.

I liked Passing Strange, but I did not love it. I was captivated when I read the book summary online. I had read a number of novels that featured black characters passing as white, but a white man passing as black’without using makeup’and it being a true story too? I HAD to read this book. The book has some fine features. Eventually, I was left with a blah feeling after reading it.

Despite Sandweiss exhaustive research, there was a human element missing, a piece of a puzzle, that prevented me from connecting or empathizing with Clarence King. If Passing Strange had been a novel, I would have said that the character Clarence King was not fully developed. Mainly, I missed knowing Clarence King motivation for becoming James Todd: when did he come up with the scheme; did he believe he had pulled off the deception; did he ever think what would happen to him if his double life was exposed? Because King did not leave a diary/journal or Sandweiss did not find one; I do not know King's motivation, but I would love to find out.

In all fairness, Sandweiss realized that there were holes in King's story and there were no way to fill due to the lack of documents needed to verify King's thoughts or movement. This lack of verified proof was more obvious when Sandweiss turned the spotlight on Ada Todd, Clarence King's wife. While the story is good, the absence of this information hinders the book. I believe the story would have been better if it was given an historical fiction treatment; thereby, allowing Sandweiss to pack in the spaces the research was unable to do.

Passing Strange, as it stands now, is an OK book. The book has a tendency of becoming dry in a few places due to Sandweiss relaying facts upon facts as one would compose a shopping list. If Sandweiss had concentrated more on the storytelling aspect rather than the bare bones verified facts of the story, Passing Strange could have been a marvelous book.