New 'Consequences' memoir is a fake

NEW YORK, March 4 (UPI) -- Riverhead Books is recalling all copies of "Love and Consequences" after the memoir was revealed to be a fake, The New York Times said Tuesday.

The unit of Penguin Group USA recently published the book about the life of a half-white, half-American Indian girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child who ran drugs for the Bloods gang.

Margaret Seltzer wrote the purported memoir under the pseudonym Margaret B. Jones, however, Seltzer's sister saw a newspaper article about the author and called the book's editors and said that Margaret Seltzer is all white and grew up in the upscale Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles with her biological family.

In addition to yanking the volume from shelves, Riverhead Books has also canceled Seltzer's book tour.

"There's a huge personal betrayal here as well as a professional one," Sarah McGrath, the editor at Riverhead who worked with Seltzer for three years on the book, told the Times.

"I just felt that there was good that I could do and there was no other way that someone would listen to it," Margaret Seltzer said in a telephone interview with the newspaper.