March 26, 2008

Book removed from circulating collection

Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival, recently added to the general circulating collection and posted to this blog on March 24th, has been removed from the library at the request of the publisher, Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group, USA.

Excerpts from the New York Timesarticle, Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction include:

"In “Love and Consequences,” a critically acclaimed memoir published last week, Margaret B. Jones wrote about her life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods. "

"The problem is that none of it is true."

"In a sometimes tearful, often contrite telephone interview from her home on Monday, Ms. Seltzer, 33, who is known as Peggy, admitted that the personal story she told in the book was entirely fabricated. She insisted, though, that many of the details in the book were based on the experiences of close friends she had met over the years while working to reduce gang violence in Los Angeles." (Motoko Rich, NYT, 3/4/08)


Love and Consequences has been withdrawn from the circulating collection and returned to the publisher.