This absence is glaring in the case of Ada Copeland, whose very birth was never recorded. Yet it also exists, albeit more subtly, in King’s life. Sure, Clarence King was a public figure with a generous paper trail, but what of James Todd? The great care King took to obscure that part of his life reverberates down the years, so that even an assiduous researcher (take a look at the rigorous footnotes) finds only small shards of information.

And so Passing Strange is dotted with lacunae, many of them marked with such phrases as, “No anecdotal stories from Ada’s own childhood survive,” or “It is not entirely clear just how Clarence King’s double life began.” Sandweiss fills in at least some of these gaps with careful speculation. In other words, she takes us to the point where facts disappear, and then offers well-researched possible scenarios. (It’s the research, and the disavowal of omniscience, that divides the historian from the novelist.)

The larger point, though, is that society, and thus history, values certain lives over others. Some are chronicled in newspapers, biographies, and archives; others pass into obscurity. The challenge to the present-day historian is to resurrect as much as possible of those rich, yet undervalued lives—and in Passing Strange, Sandweiss more than rises to the challenge.

• 1
• 2