A black child born in the twilight of slavery, William Henry Ellis inhabited a world of fraught, ambiguous racial categories on the anarchic border between the United States and Mexico. He adopted the name Guillermo Enrique Eliseo and passed as a Mexican. A shrewd businessman, he became fabulously wealthy and found himself involved in scandalous trials, unexpected disappearances and diplomatic controversies. Constantly switching identities, Eliseo identified and exploited the porousness of the colour line and the border line.

In The Strange Career of William Ellis, Karl Jacoby presents an intriguing narrative set in a secret and ever-changing world—that of Reconstruction American.