The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal is a non-fiction book by Lily Koppel about a discarded 75-year-old diary, rescued from a dumpster, based on Koppel's 2006 New York Times[1] City section cover story.
In October 2003, Koppel found the diary in a steamer trunk that had been unloaded from the basement of her apartment building at 98 Riverside Drive.
Kopel recruited lawyer and private detective Charles Eric Gordon to try to track down the diary's owner, which he managed to do.
In 1928, she met her future husband, Nathan Howitt, whose family owned a hotel in the Catskills where the Wolfsons spent their summers.
As a teenager, she met and became infatuated with famous stage actress Eva Le Gallienne.