J.K. Rowling’s Dad Sold Signed ‘Harry Potter’ Copy After She ‘Told Him to Go Pound Sand’: Book

J.K. Rowling‘s strained relationship with her father, Peter, became so bad that at one point, she refused to offer him financial help, according to an upcoming book on the famed Harry Potter author.

In an exclusive excerpt from A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling by Solomon Schmidt (to be released on June 23), the author describes a moment their relationship reached “a breaking point.”

“Rumors spread in the press and even among their extended family that Rowling had suspected Pete of having an affair with [second wife] Janet while [Rowling’s mother] Anne was suffering at home from MS,” Schmidt writes in A Pen to Change the World.

“This was never confirmed, although Pete (who vehemently denied the [rumor]) once commented to a newspaper, ‘I have worried in the past that, if Joanne keeps reading it, she will believe it,'” the book says.

By 2003, at the height of Rowling’s fame, she and her father were “at loggerheads,” Schmidt writes, adding that Peter had “apparently ran into financial troubles” somewhere down the line but “allegedly refused any monetary assistance from his daughter.”

According to A Pen to Change the World, “Pete decided to sell his autographed Potter books, including the one his daughter had dedicated to him and inscribed for Father’s Day.”

The seven-book series by Rowling, now 60, about the wizarding world is the best-selling book series in history.

Peter allegedly asked his niece Bryony for help in auctioning his personalized Harry Potter copies off in New York.

In A Pen to Change the World, Schmidt writes, “‘Pete had called my mum up,’ described Bryony. ‘He was frantic and beside himself. He told her that he owed money and was going to lose his house and his business, and basically that he’d be homeless. He told her that he reached out to Jo begging for her help for a loan or whatever, and she basically told him to go pound sand. He told my mum that he didn’t want to do it, but the only thing he had of any value that he could sell and could save his house and business were a couple of personally signed copies of [first-edition] Harry Potter books that Jo had signed.'”

“Rowling would have one of her representatives issue a statement which denied knowledge of Pete’s failed business or the report of her refusal to help him,” Schmidt writes.

“When the auction took place in December 2003, Pete obtained around $50,000 in exchange for his daughter’s books,” the author continues. “Upon learning this, Rowling was reportedly furious. And so, father and daughter went their separate ways, not speaking to each other anymore. Instead of the happy family Anne had dreamed of, fractured and embittered relationships were the reality.”

A Pen to Change the World: The Life of J.K. Rowling, which follows Rowling from her childhood in England and chronicles her writing of Harry Potter for the first time, will be released on June 23.