Sweeter than Fiction

The Red Leather Diary allows the diarist to reclaim a lost chapter of her life 75 years later.

Journalist Lily Koppel was living in Manhattan and working at The New York Times as a celebrity reporter when one morning she discovered a dumpster filled with 50 steamer trunks parked outside her Upper West Side apartment building. The building’s storage space had been cleaned out, and former tenants’ belongings were headed for the landfill. Her curiosity piqued, Koppel climbed into the dumpster and opened trunk after trunk to reveal a portal into 1930s New York City. Among the treasures Koppel found — in addition to a vintage purse collection and Bergdorf Goodman coat — was a red leather diary, its cover crumbling beneath the weight of time.

The diary had belonged to Florence Wolfson, a feisty teenager with lofty literary and artistic aspirations. Florence made daily entries into her diary from age 14 to 19, never missing a single day in five years. Poring over the pages, Koppel unearthed a heartbreakingly candid account of a young girl’s quest of self-discovery and voracious appetite for art, beauty and romantic love.

“This was an absolute message in a bottle to me,” says Koppel, who brings Florence’s spirited personality and privileged world to vivid life in The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal (HarperCollins). “Florence was this vivacious creature and literary-type heroine who led a really cosmopolitan life. She became a guide to me in navigating my own life, and had a very special presence in my life before I even met her.”

With the help of a lawyer specializing in finding missing persons, Koppel found 90-year-old Florence living in Florida and returned the diary to the woman’s surprise and delight. “It was an incredible moment when I handed her the diary,” recalls Koppel. “It felt like I had brought this woman to meet her 90-year-old self. They recognized each other.”

Part memoir, part biography, the book enchants with episodes from Florence’s energetic youth while delivering a broader message about the power and permanence of the handwritten word.

Lily Koppel will make two book tour appearances in San Diego: September 3 (7 p.m.) at The Ink Spot in the East Village (downtown, on 13th Street between F and G streets) and September 4 (7:30 p.m.) at Warwick’s Book Store in La Jolla. For more information, visit redleatherdiary.com.

Top: Author Lily Koppel with Florence Wolfson Howitt Left: Flapper Florence at 14 outside of her Upper East Side apartment building. Right: The Italian count, Filippo Canaletti Gaudenti da Sirola, a poet and pilot, with whom Florence had a love affair when she sailed to Europe in 1936.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »