Passing Strange

Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
By Martha A. Sandweiss
Penguin Press, 2009. 370 pgs. Biography

This is the fascinating story of Clarence King, a white man born to wealth and privilege, who made a name for himself as the father of American geology…except when he was a black man known as James Todd who worked as a railroad porter to support his black wife and their five children. Yes, the two men were one and the same and Sandweiss dedicates this new biography of King to exploring the duplicity of his life and the consequences others paid for his deceptions.

There is no doubt that the story of Clarence King deserves to be told. The fact that a man could live two completely separate lives without anyone ever discovering the truth is the stuff of legend. However, so few records actually remain to illuminate how and why King managed such a feat that readers may find themselves unsatisfied with the incomplete portrait presented. What Sandweiss does present is an excellent view of race relations in the United States through the turn of the century and beyond. Not quite the revelations that were expected, but an illuminating narrative all the same.

CZ