NEW YORK — Michael Finkel was in the grip of despair in February 2002, fired from his job at the New York Times Magazine for writing a story about slavery in West Africa based on a composite character.

Little did Finkel know that his life was again about to change because of Christian Longo, one of the most wanted fugitives in America after killing his wife and three young children on the Oregon coast. Longo was tracked down that January in Mexico, where he was arrested and returned to Oregon.

While in Mexico, Longo, who had often read Finkel's stories, assumed the former journalist's identity. The real Finkel heard about the identity theft when a reporter called to interview him. Finkel quickly sensed that exploring this bizarre coincidence might salvage his career. Shortly after Longo's capture, Finkel asked to meet with the accused murderer, now on Death Row at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

"At the same time that you were using my name, I lost my own — my firing, as I mentioned, was very public," Finkel writes. "Now that I'm out of a job, I am sort of seeking to find out who I really am."

The intersection of these two lives is the basis of Finkel's "True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa," a tale of his search for redemption. The book has dramatically reversed his fortunes. Finkel, 36, said he got a $425,000 advance, some of which he will donate to charity in honor of Longo's slain wife, MaryJane. His book has been optioned for a movie by Brad Pitt's Plan B production company.

"True Story" was met with positive reviews but unforgiving attacks on the author's professionalism. The New York Observer called it a "riveting read," while Salon.com called Finkel's willingness to befriend a murderer to save his career worse than the original lie. The New York Times shrugged off the book as insincere.

Other disgraced journalists have written memoirs, notably Stephen Glass, fired by the New Republic in 1998 for fabricating stories, and Jayson Blair, who resigned from the Times in 2003 amid accusations of plagiarism and fraud. Both books tanked.

Longo's co-defense attorney, Steven Krasik, said he read the book and found no contradictions with facts that emerged at trial. Longo pleaded guilty to killing his wife and 2-year-old daughter, Madison. A jury convicted him of killing Zachery, 4, and Sadie, 3.

"True Story" parallels Finkel's and Longo's lives, blending a reporter's work with a grim account of murder on the rugged Oregon coastline. And Finkel said they shared a few "personality traits": an inflated ego and trouble telling the truth. While unraveling Longo's lies, Finkel acknowledges a few of his own. He said he lied about everything, from claiming to have a younger brother who died to an ability to speak foreign languages and play musical instruments.

A clean-cut, one-time churchgoing 28-year-old, Longo was accused of suffocating MaryJane, 34, and the children, stuffing their bodies in suitcases and throwing them into shallow ocean inlets before going to work the following day and attending an office pizza party.

When Finkel was sent to West Africa for a story on child slaves in cocoa plantations, it was a hot topic. Journalists were beating a well-worn path to fixers and translators who introduced them to boys who attested to being slaves. But Finkel, sensing the stories were coached as a means for the fixers to make money from foreign correspondents, set out to find his own subjects. After weeks of thrashing through the jungle, however, he found none, and indeed the problem of slavery on cocoa plantations was seen as having been exaggerated.

Finkel instead tried to write a more nuanced story on poverty, about teenagers who worked for slavelike wages. His editor pressed him, Finkel writes, to profile a single teen. He didn't have one. In a panic, he stayed up for several days eating high-altitude alertness pills and fabricated a character, Youssouf Male, a composite of boys he had interviewed. He fired off a photo from his personal camera of "Youssouf Male" — in fact of another, unnamed teen.

"Obviously, I'll never do that again," Finkel said.