PositiveThe New York Times Book Review... painstaking ... It must be said: For a tale as colorful as this one — sex! corruption! greed! betrayal! — the storytelling can be a little drab. I yearned (in spots, particularly in the first half) for a little more yarn spinning, particularly involving the clandestine love between Clark and Post. The facts are there, sometimes to the point of overload. It’s the feelings that are occasionally missing ... Brown’s research is jaw-dropping in its meticulousness. For the better part of two decades, she went wherever the next secret took her, tracking down diaries, scrapbooks, letters, passenger lists, prison records and other archival material. When she can’t get to the bottom of something, she scratches to come as close as she can...Brown may have rightly worried that any loose end might invite broader skepticism — this tale seems way too tall to be true.
