Passing Strange - Tapa dura

In spite of the dramatic improvement in her looks thanks to cosmetic surgery, Claudia finds her life undermined by insecurity and her relationship with her husband threatened as she becomes aware of the pervasive racism of the South and finds herself drawn to their black yardman as she searches for an honest connection in life. 25,000 first printing.

the misfortune to be born with an ugly face. Growing up in a modest, loving Vermont family, she painfully learned to compensate for her looks in other ways―ways that led to a good marriage to Dan, a young man from a well-off New York City family. Appalled by their new daughter-in-law’s appearance, Dan’s parents encourage plastic surgery, and suddenly, amazingly, at age thirty, Claudia experiences life for the first time as an attractive woman.

Claudia barely has time to accustom herself to her newly sculpted features when Dan’s work transfers the couple to a small town in the South. There, she begins to feel an affinity not just to the lush, hot landscape but also to the black people who live, as she once did, at the margins of the affluent white society she and Dan are welcomed into. Claudia’s lifelong wish for prettiness has come dazzlingly true, but behind her remade face, she struggles to believe in it. Increasingly isolated from Dan, who is relishing the