The gripping memoir by “Margaret B. Jones” received critical raves. It turns out it should have been reviewed as fiction.
The author of “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed autobiography about growing up among gang-bangers in South Los Angeles, acknowledged Monday that she made up everything in her book.
“Jones” is actually Margaret Seltzer. Instead of being a half-white, half-American Indian who grew up in a foster home and once sold drugs, she is a white woman who was raised with her biological family in suburban Sherman Oaks and graduated from the exclusive Campbell Hall School, a private campus.
Her admission that she is a fake came in a tearful mea culpa to the New York Times, which last week published a profile of Seltzer using her ‘Jones’ pseudonym.
Seltzer was unmasked when her sister Cyndi Hoffman saw the profile and notified the memoir’s publisher, Riverhead Books.
Riverhead has withdrawn the book and canceled a book tour.
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