Fitting title for a fake memoir. No one is going to be showing this author a whole lot of love

“Love and Consequences” is just the latest in the mold of “A Million Little Pieces“, an essentially completely falsified memoir published by Margaret B. Jones. It was critically acclaimed, received a rave review in the NYT, and seemed well on it’s way to being a bestseller. But one phone call unraveled it all… (really quickly too, much more quickly than these things usually go)

O, the Oprah Magazine called it a “startlingly tender memoir,” and Entertainment Weekly called it a “powerful story of resilience and unconditional love.” Too bad it’s completely hogwash. Margaret B. Jones was not the a half-white, half-Native American girl who grew up as a foster child in South-Central Los Angeles, running drugs for Bloods as she claims in the “memoir”. She’s actually Margaret Seltzer, completely white, and grew up in a well-off neighborhood in Los Angeles with her real family. She had never lived with a foster family, run drugs, or even graduate from the University of Oregon as she claimed.

The unraveling was quick, without any Oprah appearances or drawn out debate. Profiled in the “House & Home” section of the New York times, Ms. Seltzer was pictured with her 8 year-old daughter. She was gaining publicity, fame, and with that was probably hoping for some fortune. Unfortunately for Margaret, her sister Cyndi Hoffman saw the piece and took it upon herself to call the New York Times and tell them that all of her younger sister’s claims were false. In a telephone interview, “Peggy” or Margaret Seltzer admitted that the story in the book was totally fabricated, pieced together with the stories of friends and others she had met throughout her life.

The punishment was swift. There will be no huge success for Peggy, as Riverhead Books (part of Penguin Group) is recaling all the copies of the book and have understandably cancelled her book tour. She was prepared to continue and perpetuate her lies, but it was all spoiled by a simple phone call from her older sister. Maybe she should have told her family she was planning on doing this before starting? What did she think was going to happen? Either she achieved fame and they would realize it, or she would not achieve any fame and lied for nothing.

The sad part of this story is that this book could have probably been a very interesting read in the fiction section, as she clearly had a large amount of base material and ideas to craft compelling stories. Instead, she followed the footsteps of other famous memoir-falsifiers and like many before her was burned for it.

If you remember that far back (we barely do, it was a week ago), we featured the revelation that the story of Misha Defonseca’s childhood was fake (see related posts below), and James Frey admitted his memoir was made up and exaggerated only two years ago. But Misha had years of royalties and a French movie made of her story, while James Frey at least was in the spotlight for awhile. What Margaret should have done is somehow hold off the allegations for awhile, at least until she could parlay the success into a book deal (fortunately not predicated on truth) like James Frey did. A shame! Right now, “Love and Consequences” is not doing so hot on Amazon, with 6 nice little one-star reviews (and the only reviews on the book as of writing this piece).

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