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

THE RED LEATHER DIARY lay silent for more than three quarters of a century. The trunk in which it was hidden languished among other artifacts in the basement of 98 Riverside Drive, a vintage pre-war apartment building on the Upper West Side. In 2003 the management decided to empty the abandoned storage bins and cart it all to a dumpster. Some passers-by jimmied open the locks in search of old money. Others stared transfixed, as if gazing into a shipwreck. The diary was fished out of the dumpster by a doorman and given to resident and New York Times journalist, Lily Koppel. As she read the words on the leather bound pages, Koppel discovered a fairytale set in Manhattan during the Depression and the glowing world of a flapper and 1930s glamour girl. “This book belongs to…Florence Wolfson” was the only clue left for Koppel. Who was this platinum blonde who wrote with such passion? Compelled by the stories and the lost New York captured so well by this teenaged author, Koppel set out to find the diary’s owner. One day, a chance call by a private investigator leads Koppel to Wolfson, now 90 years old, living in Connecticut with her husband of 67 years. Wolfson is mesmerized by how well the diary had been preserved and the life she had almost forgotten filled with art, theater, salons and many lovers (chief among them Eva Le Gallienne and the son of an Italian count, Filippo Canaletti Gaudenti Da Sirola). In THE RED LEATHER DIARY Koppel recreates the world in which Wolfson lived and captured so prominently. It is a portal that leads readers to a lost world, a world in which New York is the centerpiece and life is filled with glamour and new beginnings. Similar to Mary Cantwell’s Manhattan Memoir, this is a book that will make readers fall in love with New York all over again.