Ghost Writing a NY Times Bestseller

In 1989 I received a rare letter while I was living in the Eritrean refugee camp in Yemen. I got my mail about every two months, and it wasn't often that I got a letter from a stranger. The envelope had been typed, and the return address was New York City. It wasn't a bill - so I was very intrigued.

I held onto the letter for a few days, and opened it on my way back from class one afternoon - I was stunned by its contents. A bestselling author (of travel books) was requesting information about my village and the refugee camp for his next book! As I read on, I couldn't believe the next request: He wanted me to go out to an island in the Red Sea and recover his diaries that he had left there when he had been shipwrecked several years before. I began to wonder if the whole thing was a hoax, but the last part of the letter gave me the opportunity to verify the legitimacy of his request.

He mentioned that he had just returned to Yemen, wanting to travel down to my village and then onto the nearby islands. He had been rescued by Eritrean fishermen those years before, hence his interest in the camp. But he told me he was denied permission to travel to the western side of the country. He spent time in the capital Sanaa, in the central region. He had met and talked to other Peace Corps Volunteers (who in turn put him in touch with me), so I knew part of the story was legitimate. These were the days before the Internet, so I had no way of knowing if he was indeed an author or if he had been shipwrecked.

I soon found out that I could only grant half of his total request: There was no way I could go out to the islands, as they were now military installations. So I decided to send him some information on the camp. He wrote back and asked for additional details. I spent some time and told him a great deal, even mentioning students and villagers by name. I mailed the second letter, and soon got engrossed in the last several months of my tour. By the time I left Yemen, I had forgotten the whole thing.

A few years later, I was working at a literacy agency back in the states. One day I picked up a Time magazine and headed off to the break room for lunch. As I was leafing through the pages, the title of a book review grabbed my attention: It was a travel book about Yemen. To my surprise, it had become a bestseller! I made a mental note of it, and returned to work. Six months later I got around to finding a copy of the book. I picked one up at the local library and skimmed through it quickly, hoping to see if and how he had incorporated my letters. I got to the middle of the book, and I literally dropped it on the floor. This travel author had not only incorporated my information, he had personalized it as well.

The book claimed that he had travelled from the capital, down to my village. The accounts I sent him were now his own experiences, right down to the names of my students. I was dumbfounded, but not for the obvious reasons. I was cynical enough not to be completely surprised by the "literary license" he enjoyed. No, it was something else that dawned on me. He recounted (invented) an episode in a nearby village (a village by his own admission he could have never have visited) where he and his Yemeni guide had come across a dead body that was being ignored by the locals. First of all, this would have never happened in an Islamic country, and second, it didn't because the author was not there to witness it, nor did he a local letter writer feeding him information from that village. What was the point of that excerpt?

Oddly enough, I gained a great lesson from this experience, one that I hadn't expected. It was obviously wrong to take my experiences and to publish them as his own, particularly in a non-fiction travel book. But to take credit for any one's work, partially or completely is equally suspect. As a leader, we often do this. Or we overestimate our contribution, failing to acknowledge the input of others. I think a good leader would supervise talented individuals and groups who would accomplish great things. Motivating, supporting, and guiding these people is a contribution of its own, worthy of a fair and balanced appraisal.

*Epilogue - I attempted to reach the author a few times shortly after I finally read his book. He never replied. Thirteen years later, with the help of the Internet, I finally reached him via email. At first he said he didn't remember me, but later did recall our interchange vaguely. He was very tentative and asked me what I wanted. I was polite and asked him for some copies of his books for a charity auction. He promptly sent me a few books.