Reviewed summary
Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line
Clarence King, a celebrated white geologist, secretly lived as James Todd, a Black Pullman porter, to marry and raise a family with Ada Copeland, a Black woman formerly enslaved. This startling reversal of the usual racial passing story forces us to rethink race, identity, and love in the Gilded Age. How far would someone go to live between worlds?
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