Product Description
BASED ON A TRUE STORY. In 1994 Misha Defonseca joined up with tiny Mt Ivy Press to produce a book about her childhood experiences during the Holocaust. A Jewish war orphan who lost her identity when her parents were arrested by the Nazis, she set out on foot at age 7 to find them, walking 3,000 across war-torn Europe and hiding in the forest where she was befriended by wolves. The book was just hitting its stride, attracting interest from Disney Studios and Oprah Winfrey, when suddenly Defonseca turned against her publisher, Jane Daniel, and filed a lawsuit. Claiming that the publisher had not done enough to promote the book, she won a $33 million judgment, one of the largest in Massachusetts history. Ten years and thirteen additional lawsuits later, Daniel was wiped out financially and emotionally. In the interim, Defonseca's book had become a bestseller in eighteen countries and a feature film. Then Daniel, by accident, stumbled across documents suggesting that Defonseca was not who she claimed to be. Daniel's only remaining asset was the story about the case that she had been writing in her head through the whole ordeal. She began posting chapters, as she completed them, on a blog, not knowing what to expect. "This book is being written in real time," she wrote. "I do not know how it will end." What happened next is miraculous ‹ a truth-is-stranger-than-fiction detective story: Daniel was contacted by a forensic genealogist who came across the blog and thought she could crack the case. With no name, date or place of birth to go on it seemed an impossible mission. But truth has a mysterious way of seeking the light. After 20 years of deceiving millions of people, Defonseca, at last, was confronted with her real identity: the daughter of a Nazi collaborator from a Catholic family. Defonseca confessed that her memoire was a hoax. This is a story of the wildcat world of independent publishing, the horrors of the legal system, and most of all, a personal battle for survival against staggering odds.
