Deborah Blum

Deborah Beatriz Blum has written two books: COMING OF AGE: The Sexual Awakening of Margaret Mead and BAD KARMA: A True Story of Obsession and Murder.

Blum's interest in other cultures and far-away lands began when she traveled the world as a writer on the television series In Search Of…. Her first book, Bad Karma: A True Story of Obsession and Murder, took her on an extended journey through India. Since then she has sold story ideas for feature films, producing several, including Clean and Sober, and has worked as a writer-director of documentaries for National Geographic, the Discovery Channel, and the History Channel. She makes her home in Los Angeles with her husband and three sons.

Both of Blum’s two books have been based on life-long interests.

Her most recent book COMING OF AGE: The Sexual Awakening of Margaret Mead was inspired by a chance encounter Blum had with Margaret Mead many years ago. At the time, Mead was in her early seventies, world-famous as an anthropologist, a social commentator and an agent of change. Blum was a twenty-two year-old college graduate, mostly unemployed, aimless, and desperate to find work. The encounter led Blum to start reading and finally, in 2009, when Mead's correspondence was released into the public domain, to begin compiling her letters. The result is an exploration of Mead's own coming of age, an up-close exploration of the sexual awakening that inspired so much of Mead's later work.

Blum’s first book BAD KARMA: A True Story of Obsession and Murder was based on a murder that occurred in 1969, in Berkeley, while Blum was student at the University of California. Although Blum didn't know the murder victim or the young man who killed her, she recalls feeling that she could relate to both. Years later, when the case - which became known as Tarasoff - became a California Supreme Court landmark ruling concerning confidentiality between therapist and patient, Blum’s interest was renewed. Her book traces the fateful infatuation that led a therapist to break his oath of confidentiality with his patient, in an attempt to save a young girl's life.