Words for the Taking: The Hunt for a Plagiarist

In Words for the Taking author Neal Bowers takes the reader on an unusual hunt for a literary stalker. A poet and teacher by profession, Bowers became a detective out of necessity when he discovered one of his poems had been plagiarized and repeatedly published by someone calling himself David Sumner. Later, he learned Sumner had stolen more of his work and the poems of other writers as well. Here he describes his almost surreal search for the plagiarist and its surprising aftermath.

For Neal Bowers, David Sumner--a.k.a. David Jones--became an almost mythic adversary, and Bowers's quest for justice a kind of heroic quest. The character of the plagiarist is at the heart of this story: who was "David Sumner" and why did he steal another man's words? The answers to these questions prove as troubling as they are startling.