Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line

by Martha A. Sandweiss

Clarence King is a hero of nineteenth-century western history. Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, bestselling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, King was named by John Hay “the best and brightest of his generation.” But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he lived a double life—as the celebrated white explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd. The fair, blue-eyed son of a wealthy China trader passed across the color line, revealing his secret to his black common-law wife, Ada King, only on his deathbed.

Noted historian of the American West Martha Sandweiss is the first writer to uncover the life that King tried so hard to conceal from the public eye. She reveals the complexity of a man who while publicly espousing a personal dream of a uniquely American “race,” an amalgam of white and black, hid his love for his wife and their five biracial children. Passing Strange tells the dramatic tale of a family built along the fault lines of celebrity, class, and race—from the “Todds” wedding in 1888 to the 1964 death of Ada, one of the last surviving Americans born into slavery, to finally the legacy inherited by Clarence King’s granddaughter, who married a white man and adopted a white child in order to spare her family the legacies of racism.

A remarkable feat of research and reporting spanning the Civil War to the civil rights era, Passing Strange tells a uniquely American story of self-invention, love, deception, and race

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, American History, African American, Book Club, Race

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Lois · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author drops the n-word in full form far too often, is weird about formerly enslaved people after The Civil War, spends far too little effort fleshing out and making relevant the world of Ada King and finally the author treats this like a love story when it is anything but.
Clarence King could've legally wed Ada Copeland. Instead he has a common law marriage under an assumed name and race.
King had a fetishism for Black & other WOC. It was deeply rooted in his white supremacist beliefs.
I believe he likely was unable to get Ada to sleep with him outside of marriage. I believe he arranged his married life with Ada in such a way so he could drop it with no consequences to himself if he ever chose to.
His white friends, classmates, co-workers & contemporaries tell stories of his exploits with Black & other WOC including after his marriage to Ada.
King never tells Ada the truth until he is dying and unable to keel up the subterfuge of pretending to be a Black man.
He makes no legal provisions for her or his young children. This is an upper-class Ivy League educated white man.
This wasn't an error or an oversight.
He was embarrassed and ashamed of his Black wife & family.
The author treats this marriage like it was a gift to Ada when in fact it dictated not just her life but her children's also.
Leaving her great granddaughter and last descendant too fearful to have children as she was passing as white
Mostly this was just a fucking sad ass tragedy.
Nothing romantic about it.
My current husband is a white man and I fucking wish he would!

[Judith · Rating 1 out of 5]

True story: a wealthy aristocratic brilliant white guy in the late 1800's falls in love with a former slave and marries her. They set up housekeeping and have 5 children together. The catch? He tells her he is black and that he works as a Pullman porter, which explains why he is gone most of the time. Meanwhile, he leads a double life, just across the Brooklyn Bridge, traveling the world over and hanging out with his best friends who are all upper level government leaders, including secretary of state, John Hay.

With such a fascinating premise, how could you go wrong? The author has too much integrity to make up any details to flush out the story, and since this was a well-kept secret, there are very few historical details to go on. As a result, there's nothing interesting going on except for the skeletal facts. There's a lot of speculation about how they might have met, and a few historical facts about the houses they shared and the kids they had, but in the end the story really fell short of my expectations.

[Robert Case · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The nation seemed caught up in the reckless pursuit of money, bereft of values, and dangerously ignorant of its own past."
These are the words used by the author to describe the setting of her 2009 book, Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line. Her book takes place in the USA during the second half of the 1800's and especially the 1890's. I quote the words because they apply so well to our current social and political situation.

The book reads like a history text that tells a fascinating story: the tale of a well-born, white New Englander, who crossed the color line in New York City to marry and raise a family with a poor but literate black woman named Ada Copeland. They had five children together. Census records of the era describe her husband as a black man named James Todd.

The Manhatten elite knew him as Clarence King, a prominent geologist and surveyor who played a prominent role in mapping undeveloped mineral deposits in the western states. He also achieved brief literary fame with a book about his mountaineering exploits in the western states. King made and lost several fortunes as a mining engineer, spending lavishly on himself and his friends, most notably Secretary of State, John Jay.

Clarence King died penniless and alone in the dry climate of Arizona from tuberculosis. He only revealed his true identity to his wife by letter on his deathbed. Several friends found out in similar fashion. The most loyal among them discretely provided for Ada Copeland and her family long after King's death. Their fascinating story comes to light through the diligent efforts of historian/author, Martha Sandweiss.

[David Monroe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened to the interview with the author on The Diane Rehm show (http://wamu.org/programs/dr/09/02/11....) and have to read more about this fascinating story.

"Martha Sandweiss: "Passing Strange" (Penguin)
Clarence King was a famed explorer, scientist, and hero of late nineteenth century history. But the blue-eyed and fair-skinned King also led a secret double life passing as a black man. A historian examines the secret King only revealed on his deathbed to his black wife of thirteen years."

*Update* A fascinating man, an amazing story. They weakest part of this book, sadly, is it's author.Dr. Sandweiss is a wonderful researcher and writes well enough, but this needs someone who can walk that fine line between scholarly history and grab you by the lapels pop-history. Someone like David McCulloch or Doris Kerns Goodwin could do amazing justice to this man and his family.

[Joni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Somehow this fascinating story of a mixed marriage at the end of the 19th Century was a big slog. The story picks up after King dies, but the first half, especially before he met Ada was a full of the kind of writing that gives non-fiction a bad reputation.

Sandweiss wrote this book to shed light on Clarence King's marriage to a black woman at the end of the 1800s. She spends the first half detailing King's life as scholar, explorer, gentleman, and geologist. I had no idea King was so important in mapping the western part of the US. But it seemed irrelevant to the story Sandweiss wanted to convey. And very detail laden.

I skimmed a bunch and I think I skipped some pages. If you want to read the book anyway, read the first couple chapters, then go read the Wikipedia entry, then come back and read the last 150 pages.

[Rebecca Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I just couldn't get interested in this. The subject matter is interesting and gives the reader a well-researched glimpse into the race-relations of the time from a perspective that isn't very common (a white man passing as a black man and marrying a black woman), but since there was so little material that documented the Kings' relationship, I found the entire book to be somewhat speculative and therefore uncompelling. I would rather read a documentary about something that definitely happened than a novel about something that might have happened (I'm speaking of the emotions involved when I refer to the speculation...I don't doubt the authenticity of the actual events.)

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book really hits close to home, because I still haven't told my wife that I'm actually an 86-year-old Korean woman, so I very much empathize with King's position.

When I first read the description of this book, I figured he was putting on makeup or whatever to pretend to be black, but apparently in the late-19th/early-20th century, a blue-eyed white guy could just say, "I'm black" and no one would question it. Kinda understandable, considering that Thomas Jefferson's children by Sally Hemmings were only 1/8th black and no one seemed bothered by the fact that they were held as slaves (though, I mean, black or white it should probably have bothered people to own humans...).

One major downside of this book is that Sandweiss really fleshes out the narrative with a lot of conjecture, lots of "perhaps she thought X" or "possibly she did Y". I think of this as more of a writing tick than the kind of baseless speculation that I would normally hate, really - I get the impression that this was Sandweiss's way of explaining what the common behaviors were at the time, to put into perspective why this crazy story might have been more plausible than it seems on its face. Still, it would have been preferable ifi she had been more explicit about that.

[VJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was most difficult to read. Clarence King was a deceitful old bugger, who married a woman 20 years his junior. She was easily deceived. Though Sandweiss states that Ada King refused to be made a victim, she and her family were the victims of King's selfish, narcissistic acts.

So much was known about King, so little was known about Ada. Her story is little more than conjecture until the last chapters of the book, where the description of her battle with the keepers of King's secrets, memory and legacy,is presented in the courts. Winning only the title to her home, Ada's best revenge was living to the age of 103. Likely, she had no enmity against the man who had most wronged her by lying to her about his identity through 13 years of marriage and 5 children, but I think I have enough for her. There is also the matter of the lies he told to his sister and mother, not to mention the lies he committed by omission when he failed to tell his friends the true nature of his relations and lifestyle.

Clarence King was no better than the slave owners who abused their "property" whenever they liked. True, he did keep her in middle-class style (by 19th C black standards), and did profess love undying for her and the children, but this does not excuse his excessive lying. Something was wrong with King. His relationship with Ada was abuse of power, plain and simple. He wanted a woman with little education, little knowledge of the world; he wanted a woman of color because of his notions of the passionate and sensual nature of "exotics". Clarence King was a ruddy bastard.

[Nicolemauerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just upfront I have to say that I rarely read historical biographies; I always associate it with my graduate research. It's been a while since grad school, so I thought why not, I'll give this one a shot. The premise is intriguing: a famous white geographer secretly marries a black woman, fathers four children with her, and dies with only a handful of people knowing his secret. I was amazed at the amount of time and research that went into this book, that's why I am disappointed that the author often speculated on the behaviors, thoughts, and actions of the characters. She made the point that King (the geographer) loved his wife so much, but I would say that his actions prove otherwise. I liked the explanation of race relations and found that to be the high point of the book. For those who love the west and history, but not those looking for a casual read.

[Barbara Mader · Rating 1 out of 5]

I felt this might have made a pretty interesting magazine article but that it was too slight and had far too much conjecture in it to build a book upon. Interesting idea, but too much about everything dull--too much about his debt, too many mentions of his reputation as a brilliant talker, and dear heaven, too much detail about the lawyers contacted--a whole mini-biography of one lawyer who didn't even take the case to trial. A case of an author wanting to include every bit of research done.

The very start of the book almost made me close it at once--an opening detailing the census taker of 1900 walking down the street, you know, the kind of thing where the writer pretends to have been there. HATE that in non-fiction.

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clarence King was a man who moved in elite social circles, an internationally-renowned explorer and geologist, friend to men such as President Theodore Roosevelt, Secretary of State John Hay, writer Henry James, historian Henry Adams. He was considered by his friends to be the brightest and best of his generation and great things were expected of him. And yet King had a secret life that no-one, not his family, friends, colleagues or admirers, knew about. King, to all the world a confirmed bachelor, was secretly married to a black woman named Ada Copeland, born a slave in rural Georgia during the Civil War. And more than that, King himself passed as a black man.

King lived his double life for years, passing back and forth between his society life in New York, Washington and Newport, explaining his time away from Ada as due to his job as a Pullman porter, returning every so often to his long-suffering wife and five children, before disappearing again. The strain of maintaining such a charade must have been immense, and at one point King was confined to a mental asylum. He only confessed the truth to his wife when he was dying, confessing to her by letter.

That the blonde-haired, blue-eyed King could pass as black goes to the heart of this fantastic story and exposes the utter madness of the racial codes and social mores of the time. Much as Hitler would compute it decades later with the Jews, just one drop of 'black blood' was considered enough, just one great-great-grandparent was enough for a man or woman to be considered 'black', 'negro' or 'African', regardless of their actual appearance. It wasn't unusual for light-skinned African-Americans to pass as white; it was far from common for whites to cross the colour line the other way.

I could hardly put this book down. It was such a riveting tale, the kind of story one could hardly believe to be true. That King successfully maintained his double life, that no-one from either of his families ever suspected the truth, that not one friend had suspicions, is hard to imagine in today's world, when modern communications and the internet mean nothing stays hidden for long. But King was a product of his life, and his duplicity is understandable, if not commendable. There was no way a man like King could love and wed Ada Copeland and maintain his position and standing in society. If nothing else, the story of Clarence King and Ada Copeland shines a real light on the shifting sands of racial identity and social mores in Gilded Age America.

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess I read the back of the book too quickly in the airport bookstore because I thought it was about a black man passing in white 19th century America and having a brilliant career. In fact, it is about an upper-middle-class white man, a prominent geologist and scholar, passing as a black man to marry a black nursery maid. It is a fascinating story though one with little documentation for the historian author to build upon. The book provides insight into the historian's craft as the author struggles to give us as full a picture of Ada Copeland as she does of Clarence King, but her efforts are thwarted by their vast difference in class and race. Instead she uses the dearth of information on her female subject and on the secret marriage as a springboard to discuss a myriad of 19th century historical, social, and academic themes including westward exploration and expansion, geological time debates, male friendship, race definitions and passing, African American migration, African American religion, abolitionism, development of scientific and technical education, international travel and trade, literacy, West Indian immigration, and the bank collapse of 1893. Surprisingly gripping read.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Definitely well researched, as it reads like the reason I am not a fan of non-fiction. Clarence King lived a double life. I was hoping to like him, but I didn’t. The cover made me hope this was a brilliant guy from the 19th century who defied social norms to follow his heart. Instead - to me - he sounded like a brilliant con man, charming friends into lending him money and his wife into bearing his children and also the burdens of largely raising them alone.

[Darrel Bishop · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is useful in better understanding the so called "color line" which was both clear and non descript at the same time in 19th and early 20th century America and how easily it could be crossed depending on the lightness of one's skin. It could be said that Clarence King fetishized non-white women, but that may be too harsh a statement given his openly acknowledged friendship for just about everyone he met regardless of class or race. In another sense, this book is about Ada Copeland King and her relationship to one of the most famous western geologists and American romantics of the 19th century. Ada was no doubt dear to King and she is finally being given her rightful place as his wife in his biographical works. No future work on King will be complete without the full acknowledgment of her role in his life.

[Sarah Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work of non-fiction explores the double life of Clarence King. King was a late nineteenth-century celebrity who was well known for his work as an explorer in the American west and his best selling writing. He was from a prominent family from Newport, Rhode Island and was friends with well known individuals of the day including Secretary of State John Hay and Henry Adams, who was descended from two American presidents. Yet little did his family and friends know that Clarence King had a second life in which he was known as James Todd, a light skinned black Pullman porter and steelworker married to Ada Copeland and father of five children. Not until he was on his deathbed did his reveal his real identity to his wife.

King's double life was possible because of the fluid nature of racial identity in America at the time, which allowed him to convince his wife that he was indeed a light skinned black man. "Grasping that appearance alone did not determine his racial identity, the fair-haired, blue-eyed King presented himself as a 'black' man named James Todd. Rather than moving toward legal and social privilege, he moved away from it. He glimpsed something he sought in Ada Copeland and her African American world" (7-8). By dissembling to his wife about his true identity, he rightly assumed that for her it was easier and safer to be married to a well off Pullman porter than to be known as a woman in an interracial marriage. He was also clever in selecting a fictional profession of Pullman porter that affirmed his supposed black identity and that would explain both how he afforded a fairly affluent lifestyle and to explain his frequent absences.

The most tantalizing part of this incredible story is the scant lack of details. Although much is known about King's life as Clarence King, little is known about his secret life as James Todd and very little details are known about his wife. Indeed, much of the details about her life are from decades after his death, when she went to court to try to win the inheritance her husband had promised her when he was dying. The author uses historical research to imagine what Ada's life was like, but the reality is that no one knows exactly how the two met or their courtship or many details about her childhood or family background. Furthermore, although it appears clear that Ada truly did not know her husband was Clarence King until his death, it would be interesting to know exactly what she did know or what he did communicate to her about the time they spent apart. A fascinating story that was well told by Sandweiss but would have been even more fascinating if somehow had thought to interview Ada or her children for more details during their lifetime. A true shame that so much of this story was lost to history.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting story of a turn of the century, bi-racial, clandestine marriage. The work shows significant research, but after 300 pages both Clarence and Ada Copeland King remain a mystery.

King's public life is well documented and dizzying. He criss-crosses the country and the globe, dines with presidents, buys valuable art, discovers glaciers and maps California, writes a book....

Ada, born a slave, leaves Georgia for NYC, learns to read, meets a man with blue eyes who claims to be black, becomes his common law wife and bears him 5 children. She accepts that he has no family and that as a Pullman porter, steelworker or clerk, he is supporting her, the children and their servants in what seems to be a pretty good style.

Clarence's personality is said to be totally magnetic. John Hay, no stranger to magnetic personalities, underwrites his life and beyond. Where does the money go? At one point it is said that Hay has given him the equivalent of $1 million. This seems to be an extraordinary act of friendship.

The book is very wordy. There are long paragraphs about the changing race categories in the Census, what "slumming" was, descriptions of Ada's lawyers etc. I would have preferred more text devoted to the marriage, family, and other personal relationships.

What did Clarence and Ada have in common? What was their attraction? How often and how long was he really with her in their home? It is hinted that he was not always "true" to her in his travels. Maybe he did not attend the masked ball... or other big events in her life. Do we know? Why the abrupt move to Toronto? Clarence has extraordinary bonds with his friends... they last beyond his grave. Like the marriage, there is no context for understanding these unusual relationships.

How did Clarence relate to his children? Given their future lives he doesn't seem to impart his sense of adventure or outdoor life to them. Did this aspect of him disappear at "home"? Did he encourage them to go to college? How did Ada find out about his professional life and social background? What was her reaction?

There are a few quotes from Clarence's letters but they seem stilted and more part of the genre of the time than deeply felt. The part about the trial implies that a lot of their personal life was put on record. Longer quotes from these letters and more text from the trial would have helped depict these personalities.

[KOMET · Rating 4 out of 5]

Clarence King (1842-1901) is a man known to few Americans today. Yet when he lived, he had enjoyed a high regard and reputation as a geologist, explorer, first director of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and writer of "Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada." King also had friends in high places (such as Henry Adams and John Hay, who, in his early 20s, had served as a social secretary to President Lincoln and later served as Secretary of State under President McKinley) and was much loved for his bomhomie, wit, and kindness towards all people he met on his various travels and in his everyday life.

What was not known, however, was that, from the late 1880s until his death, King had lived a double life. He had assumed the identity of a fair-skinned black man ("Negro") and married a black woman with whom he had 5 children. This book gives the reader entree into, not only King's life, but also the life of his wife, and the subtle and virulent racism common in late 19th and early 20th century America.

In reading this book, there was one paragraph that resonated deeply with me. It is, as follows:

"King had been as well equipped as any man to seize the opportunities afforded by American expansion into the West in the decade after the Civil War. He helped engineer that expansion, harnessing federal resources to map the region's contours, catalog its natural wealth, and imagine how it could fuel the growth of American enterprise. But with the West mapped, its vast stretches of sparse settlement crisscrossed by railroads, its natural resources increasingly in the hands of large corporations, imagination and bravery were no longer enough. Nor was intellect. Scientific knowledge and personal bravado now mattered less than capital and corporate know-how."

All in all, this is a VERY EYE-OPENING book which helps to shed light on why a white man who enjoyed high privilege and status in 19th century America would choose to pass (in secret) as a Black man in a society that openly mocked, derided, and despised Black people.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a lot to consider in this book - - it is the story of Clarence King, a renowned and respected scientist in the early part of the 20th century, who “passed” as a black man and married a black woman named Ada Copeland. He and Ada had 5 children in the 13 years they were together (before he died). He kept the life with Ada a secret - - telling her his name was James Todd and that he was a Pullman porter, which provided supposed proof that he was black (although he looked white), and also provided the excuse for him to be gone from home a lot.

The book itself is chock full of excellent research. It is a bit frustrating because there is almost no information available about Ada, and about the marriage. Much of that portion of the book is speculative, and there are no clear conclusions about how or why Clarence/James and Ada might have met, how they lived their life, why Clarence kept it such a guarded secret, etc. Of course, we know that mixed marriages were frowned upon at that time in history, and that coming out with the marriage would probably have altered King’s life significantly.

The book addresses many important issues of the time - - especially race relations, the tragedy of a love (presumably Ada & Clarence were in love) that cannot be made public, and a man who promoted many deceptions throughout his life. King had a very problematic, demanding mother who relied on him to an extreme, and he also borrowed a lot of money during his lifetime, dying in major debt with no means of support for his family available.

This book was a bit drawn out, at times dry with suppositions and facts to support those ideas, but in the end I am glad I read it; it is a fascinating story of a bit of history many people might not be aware of.

[RYD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clarence King's life is more unbelievable that many fictional ones. Unfortunately, his motivations are really a mystery and we are left largely with guesswork to understand his and Ada Copeland's life together. Author Martha Sandweiss tries to put the pieces together, but through no fault of her own, there isn't a lot of there there. It is a shame, because there is much that is intriguing about their story.

[TCass SuperAwesome · Rating 1 out of 5]

Trying to read this was painful. It should have been a really interesting read, but instead, every time I looked at the book or thought about reading it I was filled with the same sense of dread I feel about filing my taxes, or going for a root canal. If I could negative star this boring, tedious, horrid term paper I would. If you find yourself faced with a choice between reading this book and explosive diarrhea, choose the toilet and read the insert in the tampon box about TSS, it’s more interesting and better written.

[Ellen H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written and very, very frustrating.

[Becky Loader · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, my, gosh.
"When a man loves a woman, can't keep his mind on nothing else. He'd trade the world for the good thing he's found."

How could this man keep track of all the lies he told?

[Vickie Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

A love story and a marriage of untruth.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really interesting story. Wish there was more concrete information and less speculation.

[Lukerik · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To see her walk across a room, you would think someone had tilted up a coffin on end and propelled the corpse spasmodically forward.”

So not his type then. As it turns out, Clarence King would take a Cockney barmaid at a pinch, but he preferred Black women. And who can blame him? What we have here is a double biography of King, geologist and generally famous white man, and Ada Copeland, his secret African American wife, whom he deceived during their entire marriage into thinking he was a black man called James Todd.

King was an unusual and interesting man and his life is well documented in his own words, those of his friends and the media of the time. In telling his story, Sandweiss opens a window onto the history of the Wild West and growing industrialisation. With Copeland the situation is almost entirely reversed. Nothing survives of her personal voice beyond a few official documents and to infer something of her early life, Sandweiss has to tell the story of the end of slavery and the fall-out from it.

The story of their life (or half-life) together is interesting enough, but what makes this book really fascinating is the light it sheds on American conceptions of race and the fundamental societal dysfunction that results from such confusions. This is not always a happy book. It brought home to me just how close close slavery is in historical terms. Here we are in a world where an African American man can step out of his house to buy tobacco and be murdered in the street by the sheriff’s posse over a matter of twenty dollars. And when you consider that Copeland died in 1963, it is possible to speak to someone today who spoke to a woman who was born a slave in the American south.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was chosen for my book club, otherwise I probably would have never read it on my own. This is a true story about a caucasian, world-renown geologist (Clarence King) that was "passing" as an African-American in the late 1800s. King ended up marrying an African-American woman and having 5 children with her. King lived a double life as an elite geologist & an African-American blue collar worker for 13 years. This book is about the journey that got him there and his world of deception that allowed him to do both for so long.

The style of writing in the book is really dry. It reads like a text book (complete with footnotes & citations), and where there are no known facts, many assumptions are made. The main character disgusts me because of the level of deception that is rampant throughout his life. Not that these stories never happen (even in today's world), but because he lied to absolutely everybody he knew and never gave it up -- all at the expense of his wife and 5 children. Others in my book club disagreed with my disgust with this man and felt almost sorry for him for not being able to live the life he wanted. I think he wanted to mislead everybody.

All of that said, I am glad I read the book because it is a true story. In the quick amount of reseach we did on the book, we could not find another significant portrayal of King's double life, so for that I am glad I read this book -- which is why I bumped my review from one to two stars. It really is a fascinating tale, but could have been written in a more intriguing style.

[Mike Lund · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting Book, But Gets a Bit Long.

Interesting book. Clarence King was well known nationally and his life is better documented. King’s wife Ada’s story relies mostly on inference based on well researched cultural history. A bit more is known during the 30’s when Ada took Kings associates to court to unearth a Trust Fund supposedly setup by King to provide for his family. Worth reading. But the author gets too close to her subject and the book gets a bit long. Somewhere between 3 to 5 stars.

Clarence King was a well known explorer. His book “Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada” is still available today on Amazon Kindle. Hard Copies of “The Helmut of Mambrino” written but King can still be found. Robert Wilson wrote “The Explorer King, Adventure,Science and the great Diamond Hoax”. He is mentioned in numerous books on the exploration of the west. He was the first director of the United States Geological Survey from 1879 to 1881. Its hard to imagine that a man with such a national reputation could maintain such a double life. Especially one that crossed racial lines during the 19th century. That these great explorers returned to eastern society and disappeared, dying broke and alone doesn’t seem abnormal. Captain John Weber of Utah fame committed suicide alone in a cabin on his son’s farm in Bellevue Iowa. He is buried in an unmarked grave. In regard to Ada. Anyone doing Geneology knows there is precious little known about common people and less if your black.

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unbelievable story told with verve and insight. This book is partially a biography of Clarence King, a famed author and friend of notables like John Hay (Secretary of State under Roosevelt, who called King "the best and brightest of his generation") and Henry Adams (of "The Education of Henry Adams" fame), who was also the first director of the United States Geological Survey (1879-1881). What Sandweiss shows here, though, is that he lived a secret double life, spending years pretending to be a black Pullman car porter named James Todd so that he could marry his love Ada Copeland, an ex-slave from Georgia living in Brooklyn. Sandweiss is able to relate King's odd habit of sudden disappearance from the historical record to the times he spent with his black family and with the birth of his children. Only at his deathbed did he reveal to his wife that he was not a Pullman porter but one of the most famous men of the era, and white.

The parts about his marriage to Ada are ultimately built on speculation, but Sandweiss conducts much of this with surprising intuition and confidence. Though some parts drag, this is an amazing story that deserves to be more widely known.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and troubling story. It's really hard to know what in the heck was really going on, and the fact that the author speculates so much (because of lack of documentation) is less than ideal.

The person with the most documentation is Clarence King, and I can't quite decide if he's a sociopath, or just a guy who was so scared to give up the privileges of his upper-class existence that he created an elaborate double life. It's also hard to reconcile the witty, loving, scientific genius that his friends describe with a man who would deceive the person he professes to love, live so far beyond his means that he borrowed the modern equivalent of millions of dollars from a friend, and who held such snobbish and patronizing ideas about those less fortunate than himself (his fascination with "slumming" is particularly vexing).

That said, it's an interesting story and should provide lots to talk about at book group. Some parts were more interesting than others, but the last half of the book practically flew by.

[Cydnie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book 2 stars mostly because I couldn't get myself to finish reading it. The author's research alone probably deserves more.
The basis of this book is the true story of Clarence King. A well-known geologist for the U.S. in the late 1800's. Besides being known as a white man, he also lead a double life as a black steel-worker, married to a black woman. The author has done an incredible job in researching this story- most chapters have 100 or more references.
My problem in trying to read it was the amount of direct quotes, and it read more like a textbook. I do better with a 'novel/story' presentation. Apparently, there is not alot of documentation about his secondary life and marriage. I guess that I was hoping for a story about how and why he chose this 2nd life, how he met and married his wife, etc... I finally took the book back to the library without finishing it. :-(