Victim of Hoax Turns Story into 'Bestseller!'

by Judith Rosen -- Publishers Weekly, 8/14/2008 2:00:00 PM

Jane Daniel, founder of the now-defunct micro-press Mt. Ivy in Gloucester, Mass., has not sat idle while awaiting the outcome of an August 28 hearing in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, Mass., seeking to overturn the 2001 maxi-verdict of $33 million against her and her press for failing to make Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years (1998) a U.S. bestseller. Subsequently, Misha Defonseca’s “memoir” did become a bestseller in Canada and several European countries, and was turned into a hit movie last fall.

Instead Daniel has turned the blog she began last summer about the original trial and its aftermath, which inspired forensic genealogist Sharon Sergeant to search out Defonseca’s birth certificate, into a book.

Early next week, Daniel will publish Bestseller! (trade paper, $19.95), which will initially be available at Amazon, under a new imprint, Laughing Gull Press. In the book, she recounts how she spent the past decade trying to clear her name and get back her lost income, when in fact, as Sergeant and Le Soir journalist Marc Metdapenningen found, Defonseca’s book was a hoax. Not only was the author not a victim of the Holocaust who was forced to forage in the forests of Europe, protected by wolves, but her family wasn't even Jewish. Her father collaborated with the Gestapo.

One chapter is still missing: the one recounting whether Daniel prevails in her effort to overturn a judgment equal to the one awarded against O.J. Simpson two years previously for two wrongful deaths. Defonseca is expected to make a rare appearance at the hearing. She’s been in seclusion since admitting in February that her story is a fake.

« Back | Print