It's a classic New York City story -- an eye-catching piece of discarded furniture leads to a trove of dumpster-dove plunder. For Lily Koppel, it happened like this: While leaving her apartment one morning in 2003, she noticed the dumpster out front was filled with old-fashioned looking steamer trunks. Following her instinct -- she was a New York Times reporter, after all -- she jumped right in and started sorting through the junk. Among other things, she found the diary of Florence Wolfson. The diary chronicles Wolfson's life in New York in the 1920s and '30s. Koppel wanted to share the story with the Times. Ultimately the story was scrapped, but Koppel held on to the diary, obsessed with its pages and its author. Three years later, she managed to track down Wolfson. Two years after that, she turned the whole account into "The Red Leather Diary." (Harper Collins) We spoke with Koppel about the book.

What was it that interested you about the diary?
I was just drawn into the world of Florence Wolfson, who kept the book from 1929 to 1934, between the ages of 14 and 19. What made it so magical was that time just seemed to dissolve as I read further into her life. She was like myself: a painter and a writer searching for love and meaning in her life and trying to carve out her own path. She seemed completely contemporary, not who I would have imagined a young girl of the '30s to be. She was extremely adventurous; her life was full of theater, art, literature, salons and love affairs with both men and women. I really felt like I got to know her, and in many ways I felt like I and this young woman of the 1930s could have almost been one person.

At any time reading the diary did you think that, "This is someone's private book, I shouldn't be reading this"?
Well, that's the very nature of a diary, it does have a little lock, ya know? I had no idea Florence would still be alive, so, to me, it was just this fascinating portal 75 years back into the life and times of this city and this young woman who felt such ownership over it. So, yeah, I knew that I was reading someone's very intimate chronicle, but, then again, I had so much respect for it.

When you did finally contact her, was she hesitant at all about her publishing her story?
She really wasn't. It was so exciting for her to regain her diary. In many ways, it's become a fountain of youth.

Sticking with it for the three years until you found Florence, what kept you going?
There was just this magical object that I found in New York, and Florence in many ways became my guide. I mean, her life was the "Breakfast at Tiffany's" ideal or Woody Allen's " Manhattan" that I had moved to New York to find. I was just inspired to make my life a story, and go off the beaten path and be drawn into this woman's world and see where it led me. In turn, it led me exactly where I wanted to be; after I met Florence at 90, it has changed my life, and she's inspired me to write my first book.

During the time when you were searching for her, did you have the support of the paper, or was this more of a personal quest at this time?
This was really just a personal quest. I did want to return the diary to her – in a way, I didn't even want to bring it into the realm of the paper. This was kind of a personal, somewhat hidden story that I was following. As I was dating people, I would test them out by saying, "Oh, look what I found! Isn't this amazing? "And if they gave me a weird look, I would be like, "Ok, forget them."