HER DREAM OF DREAMS: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C.J. Walker

Sarah Breedlove was born in 1867 on the Louisiana plantation where her parents had been slaves, was motherless by age seven, married and a mother by 14, and a widow at 20. After leaving the plantation and working as a Mississippi washerwoman, she headed for St. Louis, another way-station on her journey to becoming Madam C.J. Walker, the first black woman millionaire. In 1905, Breedlove was still washing other people's clothes; in 1919, Madam Walker died in her magnificent mansion on New York's Hudson River. Whether through a vision or stealth and science (i.e., possibly copying Annie Turbo's Poro hair care products for black women), Breedlove developed an ointment that, together with her improvements of the straightening comb, took her from rags to riches. But she left little in the way of a literary legacy. "We have to find her," notes Lowry, a novelist and author of Crossed Over: A Memoir, a Murder, "in stories and legends, in marriage certificates, deeds, interviews, insurance maps, city directories... scraps of information alongside allegations and patently untrue tales." And that's where Lowry loses her. By the time the author has stacked up all the detritus, readers are left with a hill of rather dry beans. Into a stew of "doubtless," "perhaps," "maybe," "would almost certainly" and "I imagine," Lowry tosses in such background material as information on St. Louis's kindergarten system (which Breedlove's daughter did not attend), yet offers less than we need to know about the historically significant black women's clubs and their leaders (whose paths cross hers). Lapses into sentimentality ("The wakened child stirs but will not rise") do not clarify matters. Along with 10 b&w photos, scholars will undoubtedly find Lowry's voluminous reportage about the contradictions in various accounts very valuable, but the precise character of Walker's dream of dreams is significantly less illuminated. (Apr. 30)