Excerpt from Take This Man by Brando Skyhorse, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

What else didn't people believe? I mean, how much of this was true?

Spartacus had been in theaters for three years when my mother transferred to Hollywood Professional. Dennis Wilson never went there, though his younger, shyer brother, Carl Wilson did, to escape ravenous fans at Hawthorne High. Portland Mason and Charlene Tilton, who went to Hollywood High School several years later, aren't noted among Hollywood Professional's illustrious alumni. There were no women on Florida's death row at the time my mother claimed that Betty was there.

Shane and Janaine both exist in photographs, Shane's in my memory, Janaine's in my possession. While I maybe saw a trace of my mother in Shane's face, I realize now there's no possible way a woman with my mother's features and skin color gave birth to a blonde, blue-eyed, fair-skinned girl. Years later, I noticed a tiny time stamp on the trim of Janaine's photo that says August 1977, which meant that Janaine would have been my younger, and not older, fake sister. Yet for years these children were resurrected whenever I misbehaved, a make-believe sister and brother to go with my make-believe father and ethnicity, who met horrible make-believe ends. My mother had so much pain to share that she had to invent people to hurt.

Yet in every lie she told, she always made sure to give something back to you. It could be a Weight Watchers meeting where she claimed a ribbon for losing fifty pounds after submitting a falsified weight loss card. Then she'd hit another meeting at another Weight Watchers branch later in the week, claiming the same weight loss ribbon twice.

"She lost all that weight in six weeks?" someone whispered. "She looks great!"

"If I can do it," she told a rapt group of hopeful women, "you can do it too."

It could be the Overeaters Anonymous group where she ran into John DeLorean, the disgraced auto executive who had beaten government drug trafficking charges and was at OA because he'd "started eating lots of junk food during his trial" and needed to find "a self-­empowering Christian way to lose weight." He told his fellow OA'ers not to lose faith and gave my mother his business card.

"Come work for me," he said. (My mother never found his card, no matter how often I asked.)

It could be leading a group of wide-eyed "Pilgrims"—my mother's term for whites—around a jewelry store rubbing "southwestern" squash blossom necklaces and sterling silver bracelets between her fingers. Using a just-for-white-people "Indian" voice—a taffy pull on her slight Latina accent—she'd pronounce whether a piece of turquoise had been crafted by a real "on the rez Skin."

Of course, my mother had no idea which pieces were authentic, but if her details didn't line up—or connect at all—you still wanted to believe her. Why? You felt privileged that someone with such an extraordinary story would choose to confide in, of all people, you. You'd forget meeting a hundred people, but you'd remember meeting my mother. Her story became your story.

"I can't wait to tell my friends I met an Indian!" one of my mother's Pilgrims told her in a sincere embrace. She rattled with the jewelry my mother helped her buy. "Thank you."

Hey, she'd say, at least it's never boring.

• • •

Maria met Candido Ulloa when she was twenty-five at a Mexican LA nightclub in the summer of 1972. He drove a big American car with a velvet burgundy interior and wore checkerboard polyester shirts with flashy jewelry—all those tempting accessories that make you forget you're poor. His mustache and wavy shoulder-length hair made him a ringer for the soon-to-be-famous Chico and the Man star Freddie Prinze. My mother's blood red hair from high school was now an inky Morticia Addams black that didn't drape so much as slide down her body, accentuating the svelte curves she would later spend years and thousands of dollars on worthless exercise videos and equipment trying to get back.

Excerpted from Take This Man by Brando Skyhorse. Copyright © 2014 by Brando Skyhorse. Excerpted by permission of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.