Memoir recalled after it’s found to be fiction

Two years after the fall of James Frey, a publisher has again been conned by a memoirist with a life that proved too bad to be true.

But as with Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces,” the debunking of Margaret B. Jones’ “Love and Consequences” is unlikely to change an industry where the handshake and the heartfelt vow have long been good enough to commit a story to print.

“It’s a business where honesty prevails 99 percent of the time,” said literary agent Laurence J. Kirshbaum, the former head of Warner Books.

“We have to rely on the close, good-faith relationship between author, agent and publisher. The fact that there’s a glitch once in every 150,000 titles doesn’t mean you change the whole system.”

In “Love and Consequences,” Jones writes about growing up as a half-white, half-Native American girl in a black foster home in South Central Los Angeles.

One of her foster brothers, she writes, was gunned down by Crips gang members. Jones also claimed she carried illegal guns and sold drugs for the Bloods gang.

Less than a week after the book was published, Jones’ story came apart after her older sister, Cyndi Hoffman, saw an article in The New York Times and contacted Riverhead Books.

Margaret B. Jones is actually a pseudonym for Margaret Seltzer, who is white and grew up in a well-off area of the San Fernando Valley. She attended a private Episcopal day school.

Riverhead, an imprint of Penguin Group USA, has recalled all copies of the book and canceled Jones’ publicity tour. It also promised a full refund to anyone who bought the book.

Praised as “humane and deeply affecting” by The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani, the memoir had a first printing of 24,000.

After her ruse was exposed, Seltzer told the Times that the book was based on the experiences of people she met while doing anti-gang outreach in Los Angeles.

“I thought it was my opportunity to put a voice to people who people don’t listen to,” she said.

Riverhead vice president and publisher Geoffrey Kloske said no one asked Seltzer for official paperwork such as school records, but that she submitted letters and photographs and a recommendation from a former professor.

“She even had someone claiming to be one of her former siblings. There was a substantial amount of supporting evidence,” he said.

The “Love and Consequences” scandal follows last week’s discovery that the Holocaust memoir “Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years” was a fake.

Two years ago, Frey admitted he had made up or exaggerated details about his drug addiction and recovery.

“If an author is determined to defraud the public, he or she will find a way to do so,” said Paul Bogaards, head of publicity for Alfred A. Knopf.

“I don’t see us, or anyone else, really doing anything differently. Look, this is a business where publishers don’t even test recipes in the cookbooks.”