The email from my literary agent popped up. He is the wonderful man who first believed in me without having read a single line I had written.
He is one of the most respected agents in New York City, and it is that uncanny instinct—part gut, part marketing intuition—that has made him so well regarded among his peers.
I opened it. In short, he told me that at least one of my books had been plagiarized on a website associated with Anthropic. The Guild and several authors had sued the site, and they had won. Now those of us whose work had been stolen were eligible for a settlement.
I checked the list and found a bestseller I wrote for the Zondervan division of HarperCollins: What Southern Women Know About Faith. It was the second in a trilogy of books about Southern women and, quite frankly, it helped define the niche of Southern storytelling that I have written in for two decades.
The news carried me back to a bookstore in Los Angeles at Century Plaza. This was only a few years after my first book was published, after Penguin-Putnam acquired it in a four-day auction—the book I had prayed for since I was a “young’un.” That book changed everything: more successful titles, hundreds of speaking engagements, dozens of television and radio appearances, and a movie optioned and eventually filmed from my first novel.
But before all of that, I was working on my second book with HarperCollins—a memoir of my years on the NASCAR circuit called My Life in the Pits.
In that Los Angeles bookstore, I was browsing Southern fiction and nonfiction when I discovered a newly released title that sounded similar to What Southern Women Know. I pulled it from the shelf and began to read.
Halfway through the first chapter, a paragraph hit me in the stomach. The voice was unmistakably mine—my words, my stories. My mouth went dry as I read on and found more passages lifted almost verbatim. By the time I finished, I felt sick.
It is not without irony that this happened in Los Angeles.
Brokenhearted—especially since the book was already headed toward the New York Times bestseller list—I grieved all day and through the long flight home. The next day, I called my agent. He is an ethical man, and he was appropriately indignant.
“We’ll sue,” he said. “The publisher will join us. And we will win. No doubt.”
I slowly placed the receiver down and sat on the sofa, wrestling with what to do. I was, quite honestly, hurt to the core—devastated.
“Oh, dear Lord,” I whispered, as I petted my dachshund, who had sensed my sadness and climbed into my lap.
Later, I found myself walking slowly down the hallway of my house. I remember the exact spot. In my heart, I heard what I can only describe as a divine prompting: Do not sue.
I resisted that voice for a week. In Texas, stealing a man’s livelihood—his livestock—was once a hanging offense. It’s not that severe anymore, but it still feels like a grave wrong. My livelihood—my “livestock”—had been stolen.
Finally, I relented. I called my agent and told him there would be no lawsuit. He was stunned, but he supported my decision.
It was one of the hardest choices I’ve ever made, but I knew better than to ignore that voice.
The woman whose name was on the book had hired a co-writer who was the actual thief. The other woman, gentle and kind, was ultimately bankrupted by lawsuits from other authors who acted without hesitation. A once-beautiful woman, she lost her health as well.
I was in Memphis when I heard that story, and from that day forward, I often gave thanks that I had not participated in ruining a mostly innocent life.
But this time? I will definitely fill out the paperwork.