Fake Memoirist Dupes ‘Times,’ Publisher, But Thankfully Not Oprah
Culture • March 2008 • Views: 667
Photo: nytimes.com
The Times learned an important lesson this week: Never trust a smart girl with acrylic fingernails. Love and Consequences, the acclaimed memoir of Margaret B. Jones, a half-white, half–Native American former foster child who grew up in South Central L.A., was the subject of two Times features and seemed poised to hit the best-seller list when released by Penguin this week — until it turned out that Margaret Jones was actually Margaret Seltzer, a white, private-school educated 33-year-old who had made up the entire thing