March 2009 Book Report: Required Reading

Not sure how to turn Grandma’s diary and interview notes into a compelling read? Use Lily Koppel’s The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal as your model.

 

Koppel, a New York Times reporter, rescued the diary of Florence Wolfson from a Manhattan dumpster. The diary covered five years of Wolfson’s teenage life during the Depression, with the world of 1920s flappers and 1930s glamour girls as her backdrop. Koppel’s book stands out because she’s a journalist by training, and she expertly weaves together diary entries, research and interviews with Wolfson—whom she tracked down with the aid of an attorney/private investigator—into a page turner.

 

From the March 2009 Family Tree Magazine