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

MARTHA A. SANDWEISS is professor of American studies and history at Amherst College.
Raver is a versatile, classically trained actor who has made numerous stage appearances in New York, Los Angeles, and regional theaters around the country.

It reads like fiction, but it isn't. At the end of the nineteenth century, Clarence King led a double life. To his mother and friends, like statesman John Hay and author Henry Adams, he was a well-known geologist who helped map the American West. To his African-American wife, Ada, he was James Todd, a Pullman porter and the father of her five children. Lorna Raver reads with enthusiasm and a deliberate delivery. There isn't much opportunity for characterizations as Ada and Clarence/James don't speak, but Raver makes sure you don't miss a word of this well-researched story. At the end of his life Clarence/James confessed to Ada, and his friends took care of her. A feel-good story well presented. J.B.G. © AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine