2014 Miami Book Fair | Sarah Wildman

Sarah Wildman has reported across Europe and the Middle East for the New York Times, Slate, and theNew Yorker, among other publications; she is a former New Republic staffer. She is the recipient of the Peter R. Weitz Prize from the German Marshall Fund “for excellence and originality in reporting on Europe and the transatlantic relationship” for the series in Slate in which her book Paper Love originated. Paper Love: Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left Behind (Riverhead; $27.95) is the account of one woman’s journey to find the lost love her grandfather left behind when he fled pre-war Europe.

Years after her grandfather’s death, Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a box of his letters labeled “Patient Correspondence.” But the letters inside weren’t quotidian medical histories; instead they were a path into his past, and the story of Valerie Scheftel (Valy), her grandfather’s lover who remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Who was this woman? Why had he left her? Most importantly, what had happened to her? Determined to find out what happened to Valy and what her grandfather had done to help, Wildman began a quest that lasted years and forced her to reexamine the story of her grandfather’s triumphant escape, and how this history fit within her own life, discovering Valy’s ultimate fate, and in the process rescuing a life seemingly lost to history.

2014 Miami Book Fair