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Rescued from a Dumpster on the Upper West adjoining of Manhattan, a discarded diary brings to life the glamorous, forgotten world of an extraordinary young woman.
For excess than half a century, the ruby leather diary lay silent, languishing inside a steamer trunk, its worn cover crumbling into little flakes. when a cleaning sweep of a modern-day York City cell building brings this squandered 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 track record paints a vivid catch a glimpse of 1930s New York—horseback riding in Central Park, summer excursions to the Catskills, and an fixation with a famous avant-garde actress. From 1929 to 1934, not a single days entry is omitted.
Opening the tarnished brass lock, Koppel embarks on a voyage into the history, traveling to a New York in which women folk of privilege join for tea at Schraffts, dance at the Hotel Pennsylvania, and toast the hour of darkness at El Morocco. As she turns the diarys brittle pages, Koppel is captivated by the headstrong young woman whose intimate thoughts and emotions fill the pale blue stanzas. Who was this pretty ingénue who adored the works of Baudelaire and Jane Austen, who was sexually attracted beyond her years, who traveled to Rome, Paris, and London?
bound by the hopes and heartaches captured in the pages, Koppel types out to find the diarys owner, her delicately hint the inscription on the frontispiece—"This essay belongs to . . . Florence Wolfson." A arbitrariness cell phone ask from a personal investigator leads Koppel to Florence, a ninety-year-old woman existing with her husband of sixty-seven years. Reunited with her diary, Florence ventures back to the girl she whilst was, rediscovering a lost one another that burned with artistic fervor.
bonding 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 sequences 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 yarn of a precocious young woman who dared to follow her dreams.