The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal

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Lily Koppel

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Overview

Rescued from a Dumpster on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a discarded diary brings to life the glamorous, forgotten world of an extraordinary young woman.

For more than half a century, the red leather diary lay silent, languishing inside a steamer trunk, its worn cover crumbling into little flakes. When a cleaning sweep of a New York City apartment building brings this lost treasure to light, both the diary and its owner are given a second life.

Recovered by Lily Koppel, a young writer working at the New York Times, the journal paints a vivid picture of 1930s New York–horseback riding in Central Park, summer excursions to the Catskills, and an obsession with a famous avant-garde actress. From 1929 to 1934, not a single day's entry is skipped.

Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a journey into the past, traveling to a New York in which women of privilege meet for tea at Schrafft's, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the night at El Morocco. As she turns the diary's brittle pages, Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue lines. Who was this lovely ingénue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually curious beyond her years, who traveled to Rome, Paris, and London?

Compelled by the hopes and heartaches captured in the pages, Koppel sets out to find the diary's owner, her only clue the inscription on the frontispiece–"This book belongs to . . . Florence Wolfson." A chance phone call from a private investigator leads Koppel to Florence, a ninety-year-old woman living with her husband of sixty-seven years. Reunited with her diary, Florence ventures back to the girl she once was, rediscovering a lost self that burned with artistic fervor.

Joining intimate interviews with original diary entries, Koppel reveals the world of a New York teenager obsessed with the state of her soul and her appearance, and muses on the serendipitous chain of events that returned the lost journal to its owner. Evocative and entrancing, The Red Leather Diary re-creates the romance and glitter, sophistication and promise, of 1930s New York, bringing to life the true story of a precocious young woman who dared to follow her dreams.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

If 22-year-old recent Barnard graduate Lily Koppel hadn't been agile enough to climb into a dumpster, Florence Wolfson's red leather diary might have been lost forever. As it was, Koppel rescued it from a sea of steamer trunks, brought it back to her small apartment, and began an immersion that would last for years. Wolfson's journal tracked her adolescent preoccupations and teenage yearnings from 1929 to 1934 so candidly that Koppel couldn't resist trying to track down its author. When she found her, she met a 90-year-old woman who was eager to be reintroduced to her much younger self.

Alana Newhouse

On its own, the diary offers a dusty window into an extraordinary life. With her skillful reporting, fine prose and excellent eye for period detail, Koppel has given it a lovely shine: especially since she miraculously managed to track down—and befriend—Wolfson, who is now in her 90s. In The Red Leather Diary Koppel's delicate historical filigree moves along a tale told mostly by the entries…In the end, The Red Leather Diary is a story about not one but two lovable characters—and the city that brought them together.
—The New York Times

More Reviews (8) Fewer Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Journalist Koppel found the inspiration for this book, based on her 2006 New York Times article, after discovering Florence Wolfson’s diary in a Manhattan dumpster. Koppel eventually locates Florence in Florida and surprises the 90-year-old with this artifact from her past, which reveals her views on growing up as an intelligent, ambitious and creative teenager on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1930s. Florence received the diary as a present on her 14th birthday. She recorded everything from her first kiss (with a boy) to her crush on actress Eva Le Galliene (which led her to question her sexuality) to her passion for writing and art. The diary acts as a window into a fascinating and privileged world, one that Koppel tries to recreate by writing in a novelistic way, using no more than snippets of text from Florence’s diary and, we can presume, multiple interviews as support. The result, which some readers may find frustrating and others rewarding, is that the original inspiration—the diary itself—becomes no more than a starting point for a much larger story: that of Florence’s life.

BookPage

“Florence’s life reads like E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime in places, with all the famous paths crossed and situations experienced; while descriptions of city life recall Marjorie Hart’s Summer at Tiffany... Together, Koppel and Florence take readers through a world dizzy with new ideas, rhythms and inventions.”

Elle

“New York Times writer Lily Koppel’s The Red Leather Diary melds three life-affirming subjects—Florence Wolfson’s journal of life in 1930s Manhattan, Koppel’s discovery of it in a Dumpster decades later, and the meeting of the two women—into one enchanting memoir.”

Vogue

“Sparked by a felicitous discovery in an Upper West Side dumpster, New York Times writer Lily Koppel spins an enthralling true fairy tale about a Depression-era ingénue.”

Library Journal

In 2003, Koppel, a young New York Times journalist, stumbled across Florence Wolfson's titular five-year (1929-34) diary by chance; it was sitting in a dumpster on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Koppel was rightly fascinated by this glimpse into a stranger's teenage years in the elegant and exciting New York City of the 1930s, and so she tracked down the diary's writer. After her initial surprise, Wolfson, then 90 years old and living in Connecticut, willingly fleshed out the diary for Koppel with recollections of her later life. The resulting story, which initially appeared as a New York Times feature article, is here developed into a compelling portrait of 1930s New York cleverly blended with Koppel's own experiences of the city to create a connection between then and now. Koppel's love of New York is obvious in the details she draws from Florence's diary, which show how the city has changed in ways both big and small. An entertaining and enjoyable work suited to public library collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ12/07.]
—Stacey Rae Brownlie

Booklist

“After a front-page story appeared in the New York Times Sunday City section, interest in Florence’s fascinating story prompted the author to write a full-length book that works as both a biography and a spellbinding glimpse into a vanished era.”

New York Times Book Review

“Skillful reporting, fine prose and [an] excellent eye for period detail. . . . A story about not one but two lovable characters—and the city that brought them together.”

Reader's Digest (Editors' Choice)

“In The Red Leather Diary, Lily Koppel finds an old journal in a Dumpster, gets lost in its rich take on 1930s New York and, improbably, tracks down the now-90-year-old woman whose life—real and imagined—fills its worn pages.”

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780061256776
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 4/8/2008
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 221,756
Product dimensions: 5.12 (w) x 8.00 (h) x 1.09 (d)

Meet the Author

Lily Koppel writes for the New York Times and other publications. She lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

The Red Leather Diary
Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal

Chapter One

The Discovery

Once upon a time the diary had a tiny key. Little red flakes now crumble off the worn cover. For more than half a century, its tarnished latch unlocked, the red leather diary lay silent inside an old steamer trunk strewn with vintage labels evoking the glamorous age of ocean liner travel. "This book belongs to," reads the frontispiece, followed by "Florence Wolfson" scrawled in faded black ink. Inside, in brief, breathless dispatches written on gold-edged pages, the journal recorded five years in the life and times of a smart and headstrong New York teenager, a young woman who loved Baudelaire, Central Park, and men and women with equal abandon.

Tucked within the diary, like a pressed flower, is a yellowed newspaper clipping. The photograph of a girl with huge, soulful eyes and marcelled blond hair atop a heart-shaped face stares out of the brittle scrap. The diary was a gift for her fourteenth birthday on August 11, 1929, and she wrote a few lines faithfully, every day, until she turned nineteen. Then, like so many relics of time past, it was forgotten. The trunk, in turn, languished in the basement of 98 Riverside Drive, a prewar apartment house at Eighty-second Street, until October 2003, when the management decided it was time to clear out the storage area.

The trunk was one of a roomful carted to a waiting Dumpster, and as is often the case in New York, trash and treasure were bedfellows. Some passersby jimmied open the locks and pried apart the trunks' sides in search of old money. Others stared transfixed, as ifgazing into a shipwreck, at the treasures spilling from the warped cedar drawers: a flowered kimono, a beaded flapper dress, a cloth-bound volume of Tennyson's poems, half of a baby's red sweater still hanging from its knitting needles. A single limp silk glove fluttered like a small flag. But the diary seems a particularly eloquent survivor of another age. It was as if a corsage once pinned to a girl's dress were preserved for three quarters of a century, faded ribbons intact, the scent still lingering on its petals. Through a serendipitous chain of events, the diary was given the chance to tell its story.

The first time I came to 98 Riverside Drive, an orange brick and limestone building set like a misty castle overlooking leafy Riverside Park and the Hudson River, I felt I was entering a hidden universe awaiting discovery. Under the maroon awning, I entered the red marble lobby, pockmarked with age like the face of the moon. I passed an old framed print of a gondola gliding under Venice's Bridge of Sighs, the early August evening light that filtered through stained-glass windows illuminating a young gallant displaying a jeweled coat of arms, with a dagger stuck in his belt. He was carrying a locked treasure chest.

My gaze wandered to the building's rusted brass buzzer. There were fifteen stories, each floor divided into eight apartments, A through H, where I half expected to find Holden Caulfield's name. Among the residents were several psychoanalytical practices and an Einstein. Floating through the courtyard airshaft, I heard Mozart being worked out on piano. The building seemed to have an artistic soul.

I was twenty-two. I had just landed a job at the New York Times after graduating from Barnard College. An older woman I had met at the newspaper had put me in touch with a friend who wanted to rent a room in her apartment at 98 Riverside. The building was on the Upper West Side, which has long held the reputation of being Manhattan's literary home, although few young artists could still afford the rents.

I rang the pearl doorbell to 2E, waiting in front of the peephole. The red door bordered in black opened, and my new landlady introduced herself. Peggy was in her fifties, with a Meg Ryan haircut. Midwest born and bred, she was glad to learn that I was from Chicago. She was still wearing a pink leotard and tights from Pilates, and her pert expression was hard to read behind a black eye patch. "The pirate look," she said, explaining that a cab had hit her while she was biking through Midtown. Peggy shrugged. "Just my luck."

It was a marvelous apartment with an original fireplace, high ceilings with ornate moldings, Oriental carpets, and antiques. Her collection of Arts and Crafts pottery and vases covered every available surface. When turned upside down, they revealed their makers' names stamped on the bottom—Marblehead, Rookwood, Van Briggle, Roseville and Door. I admired a faun grazing on a vase. "All empty." Peggy giggled, since none held flowers. "I know, very Freudian." She opened French doors, showing me the dining room with a parquet border, and led me through the kitchen, past a no-longer-ringing maid's bell. Down the hallway, she pointed to her own paintings, acrylic portraits and rural landscapes. "The building even has a library," added Peggy, who had just finished Willa Cather's A Lost Lady, which she recommended.

Over Brie with crackers and red grapes set out with silver Victorian grape scissors, we became acquainted on the couch, a pullout, where Peggy said she would sleep. I offered to take the living room instead of her master bedroom, but Peggy insisted. She mentioned rigging up a Chinese screen for privacy. This way she could watch TV late or get up if she couldn't sleep. She told me that when she was my age, she had also come to New York to become an artist. There was a short-lived marriage in her early twenties to a jazz musician. Peggy admitted she lived quietly now, designing Impressionist-inspired napkins and guest towel sets painted with café chairs and names like Paris Bistro, which she sold on the Internet.

The Red Leather Diary
Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal. Copyright © by Lily Koppel. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Anonymous

Posted April 25, 2008

Best book I've read in a long time

This is an amazing piece of history which reads like a novel and is highly recommended for all readers of all ages. As I read I thought, 'In our age of television and video games, it is a shame we no longer have the personalities revealed here, the philosophers, the artists.' But then I remembered young Lily Koppel not only rescued this diary from the dumpster, she followed through until she discovered Florence and produced this book. Thank you, Lily, and thank you Florence. I'm going to buy a copy for my grandma, just two years younger than the book's heroine, also named Florence and also still very much alive, alert, and full of fun.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Anonymous

Posted February 29, 2012

So far not good

I don't know what i was expecting exactly but it was not 'a day in the life of a vapid, spoiled daughter of the elite class during The Great Depression'. A lot of descriptive narration i could have done without as well.
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Anonymous

Posted February 27, 2012

Lilykit

*Lilykit meowed* echostar wont make me a apprentice cause we hav no mentors.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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AuntieBean

Posted February 10, 2009

A treasure

This book was a treasure to read. Lily Koppel guided me through the diary and provided me with a wonderous glimpse into the life of another generation. The book was cleverly designed from the cover to the pages to resemble the actual diary. I felt like I had discovered a secret as well.
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MariaSavva_Author

Posted January 15, 2009

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Wonderful

I really enjoyed reading this book. This is the true story of the discovery of a long-forgotten diary. The diary of Florence Wolfson lay undiscovered for over half a century until the author, Lily Koppel, finds it in a dumpster. Koppel is a writer for the New York Times and was naturally curious about the content of the diary. She searched for the diary's author, and 90 year-old Florence told her all about her life in 1920s and 1930s New York. Florence as a teenager had been full of energy and had a zest for life and the arts. Her story is an amazing one. Lily Koppel brings the pages of the diary to life brilliantly...
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Anonymous

Posted September 1, 2008

loved it!

Loved this book. Great peek into life of a teenage girl. Quick read, almost too quick.
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Anonymous

Posted June 25, 2008

Nostalgic, charming, magnificent

Nostalgic, charming, and magnificently written. This recreation of a young person's awakenings and yearnings in New York City in the 1930s speaks to every generation of dreamers. Highly recommended. 5 stars.
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The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal

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More About This Book

Overview

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Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Alana Newhouse

Publishers Weekly

BookPage

Elle

Vogue

Library Journal

Booklist

New York Times Book Review

Reader's Digest (Editors' Choice)

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