Martha Sandweiss' PASSING STRANGE reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle

By Roger K. Miller
Tuesday, February 24, 2009; San Francisco Chronicle

Passing Strange
A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
By Martha A. Sandweiss
(The Penguin Press; 370 pages; $27.95)

For a book on a serious subject, Martha A. Sandweiss could hardly have chosen a more appropriately clever title than the slightly archaic phrase "Passing Strange." Its story of a white man strangely choosing, in our race-riven society, to pass as a black man is passing - that is, exceedingly - strange from beginning to end.

Clarence King, born in Newport, R.I., in 1842, was a Western explorer, a geologist of wide renown, a tremendous wit and an accomplished writer who moved in the highest societies of his day. Secretary of State John Hay and historian Henry Adams were among his closest friends; Hay called King "the best and brightest man of his generation."

But King, a bachelor, lived a secret double life as the husband of a black woman. His wife, Ada, was probably born into slavery, most likely in 1860, somewhere near West Point, Ga. Her last name, if she had one, might have been Copeland. Somehow she migrated to New York City, possibly in 1884, where she might have gotten work as a domestic.

As the previous paragraph indicates, much about their lives remains unknown and unknowable, mostly because of King's herculean efforts at secrecy, but in part due to Ada's humble origins. No stories or records of her early years survive. What her life might have been like can only be guessed at from research into others in similar situations.

The author's effort is well done and well worth it, and not simply because the story is compelling in itself. King, though no longer a high-profile historical figure, nevertheless has been the subject of several biographies, and all of them have ignored or given short shrift to this central aspect of his life. Sandweiss, a professor of history at Amherst College and author of other histories, has brought a lot to light through diligent digging.

For the full review, click here.