QUILLBLOG

A few more little pieces

J. Peder Zane, staff writer and book editor for triangle.com, has written an article on his experiences working with the writer Nasdijja, the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, The Blood Runs Like a River Through My Dreams. Zane reviewed the book, calling it a masterpiece, and later met up with Nasdijja, who claimed to be an impoverished half-Navajo, half-white writer from the American southwest whose adopted son had died of fetal alcohol poisoning — biographical details that formed the skeleton of his riveting memoir. Zane hired Nasdijja to write a number of book reviews, but has since learned that the memoirist is actually a middle-class con man from Lansing, Michigan, named Timothy Patrick Barrus. The parallels to the Frey case are almost scary, according to Zane, most notably the fact that Nasdijja’s publisher ignored obvious red flags about the memoir’s veracity, including a warning from native novelist Sherman Alexie telling the publisher that Nasdijja was a fraud.

Related links:
Read the Nasdijj article on triangle.com

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