Can someone take a story that happened to you, without your knowledge, and publish it? Using your name and specifics, and take the copyright for it?

A person, whose mother lived in our small town, heard a story about our father. This person wrote a children's book based on the story, using his name and other specifics to the story, and had it published with out our knowledge. She copyrighted the work. Is that legal? Do we have any rights to the story since it was about our father?

No one can copyright an event

The events that happened to your father don't belong to anyone. They just are. Different people will have different knowledge (or beliefs) about various portions of the events, but they are just different versions of something that happened.

Yes, the author who published the story can copyright the book. But she is copyrighting her rendition of the story, not the events. Your father has the right to tell the same story in his own words. As do you. As does anyone.

Any legal issues are not about copyright

Copyright is not important here. Nor is it really a problem that this author took a real life story and turned it into a book. But using your father's name without his permission is a concern. Since it's a children's book (and you didn't mention this as an issue), I presume that she did not say anything negative about him or violate his privacy or anything like that.

At the very least, it's obnoxious to write a story about someone without his knowledge. Let alone his permission. Or that of his estate, if he is no longer living. Is it illegal? Probably not. After all, newspapers don't need permission to write about someone, why should children's books authors?

Ethically, she should have spoken to your family before moving ahead. And the publisher should have contacted you as well. It's strange that they didn't (unless she self-published). But, again, probably not illegal, as long as she didn't say anything untrue.

Ask a lawyer

To find out your rights, you need to contact a lawyer who works in your jurisdiction. This means in the country this happened in, or in the US state if it happened in the US. Even if I were a lawyer myself (I'm not) who knows publishing law backwards and forward, the law where I live could be completely different from the law where you live. So get a local expert. In the US, it should cost no more than a couple hundred dollars for a serious consultation (a quick consultation may even be free).

I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

You do have (limited) legal rights to your own name and story. In this case, if the author used your father's actual full legal name, and other identifiable details, and if your father is NOT a public figure, you might be able to make a case against her.

With that said, it may be in no way worth it, unless this book is a hit bestseller, or unless it has libelous statements damaging to your father's reputation.

https://stories.avvo.com/money/rights-life-story.html
https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/who-owns-the-rights-to-your-life-story
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/life-story-rights-whats-whats-103334

Note the following recent case, with some similarities, where a bestselling book and movie were involved. The lawsuit was dismissed on a technicality, so it's hard to know what would have happened if it had actually gone to court.

https://www.oregonlive.com/books/2011/08/handwritten_note_from_author_f.html

Assuming you are in the US...

Copyright will likely protect this author's expression of the facts. This means that you cannot copy phrases from the book (for example), but you can write a different book about the same event. (This is true no matter whose father the book is about, actually.) Copyright.gov says:

Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.

In other words, it doesn't seem to me like you have a case for a copyright angle were you to sue.

There may be other angles for you to pursue, but only a lawyer can tell you what those would be. There's just too little information to go on.

"Can someone take a story that happened to you, without your knowledge, and publish it?" Of course. Newspapers does this all the time. No one asks the president's permission before writing a news story about the latest bill he presented to Congress. Or on a more personal level, if Joe Blow is arrested, the newspapers don't ask his permission before writing a story about it.

Historians do this all the time. If a scholar is writing the history of, say, World War 2, he doesn't need to get permission from every soldier who was involved in the Normandy invasion before he's allowed to write about the Normandy invasion. Etc.

If someone writes things about you that aren't true and that make you look bad, you can sue them for libel. But in the U.S., truth is an absolute defense against libel. If what they wrote about you is true, they have every legal right to publish it.

It's possible that there are details of the case, or something in your local law, that would give you some legal right to prevent them from publishing. You could check with a lawyer. But frankly, I doubt you would have a case.

As Cyn says, nobody owns facts. Copyright law means that you own your expression of the facts, the words that you wrote or said or sang or whatever to describe the facts. But you don't own the facts.

Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

This common disclaimer exists for a reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_persons_fictitious_disclaimer

This is why I am not convinced that what the person did is legal... (especially if your dad isn't a public figure)

If you have any concern, you should consult a lawyer. But I think you have a legitimate case.