I opened this Keeler novel, written during the mid to late 1950s, but not published in English until 2000, with low expectations, and I was very pleasantly surprised. In construction and theme, this is one of Harry's best and most original works. Of course there are the usual Keeler Koinkidinks, piling up thick and fast especially toward the end, and the basic plot gimmick is a wild fantasy... a pellet of gum from a one-of-a-kind African tree grown from a seed arrived on a meteorite... when taken, the gum causes a mind-swap between two individuals fairly close together in space, and in a similar state of drowsiness, and with similar mental concerns. The swap is supposed to last only for a few seconds, before everything is back to normal... but when the gum is taken by history professor Clark Shellcross on a Boston evening in 1855, he finds himself stuck in the body of a young African freedman, Sam Brown.
This happens early in the novel and the remainder of the action is taken up by Shellcross trying to figure out what happened to his original body, and how to survive as a black man in a world where blacks are considered household goods rather than people. Unlike the usual Keeler novels, there's no murder mystery to be solved (although it takes a while for Shellcross to understand one suicide), and the only Keeleresque mystery involves a news item about a clock, built in 1540, and installed in Hampton Court Palace, England, which stops apparently whenever a famous person staying at the palace dies. This clock is mentioned on p. 8 of the novel, and then forgotten until Sam Brown's beautiful, intelligent new bride (and runaway slave) Miranda abruptly reasons out the very mundane explanation (p. 186), one that any student who had ever taken my course, Physics 341, Pseudoscience, should also have been able to come up with.
Keeler has a lot of fun with his reconstruction of 1855 Boston and lovingly describes the costumes of the characters, and the contents and furnishings of any room the main character happens to enter. I noticed a few anachronisms, some of which are obviously deliberate.
I see that the Ramble House trade paperback edition of this novel has been printed or reprinted three times in just the past 10 years. This might be one of their better sellers, and I think it deserves to be.
