I had heard of this writer some time ago but can't remember when. It was the name that caught my attention. Then I saw this over on Indianz. It looks like a fascinating read and I plan on getting the book.
The reason I'm posting this, his experience mirrors a lot of the frauds we investigate and write about. From what little I could glean from his interview it sounds like his Mother was mentally ill.
I truly believe most of these frauds are emotional cripples with undiagnosed psychosis. Which is why I am going to read this book to get a better handle on these people we report about.
http://www.indianz.com/News/2014/014413.asp'Take This Man': Uncovering A Mother's Reinventions
by NPR Staff
When Brando Skyhorse was 5 years old, his mother said she would take him to meet his father. They took a train from California to Illinois, where, at a prison, he met Paul Skyhorse Johnson, a Native American political activist who'd been incarcerated for armed robbery.
"He looked literally like the part of a stereotypical American Indian brave," Brando tells NPR's Arun Rath. "And I thought, 'Oh good God, this is my dad? This looks great!' "
Back at home in Los Angeles, Brando's mother, Maria, pounded home his Native American heritage. She insisted Brando grow his hair long and convinced him to abstain from the Pledge of Allegiance at his elementary school.
But when Brando was 12 or 13, a realization dawned: His father couldn't possibly be Paul Skyhorse Johnson. All of his mother's details about her life with Johnson simply didn't make sense.
In fact, Brando wasn't Native American at all. He was Mexican — his birth name was Brando Kelly Ulloa. But his Mexican father had abandoned the family when Brando was just 3 years old. That's when Maria struck up correspondence with the incarcerated Paul Johnson and convinced him by mail to adopt both Brando and the middle name Skyhorse. It was decades until Brando would reunite with his real father, a Mexican man named Candido.
That sprawling web of tall tales and realizations makes up Brando Skyhorse's captivating new memoir, Take This Man.
http://www.npr.org/2014/06/07/319418859/take-this-man-uncovering-a-mothers-reinventions