Sarah Wildman

Paper Love

One woman s journey to find the lost love her grandfather left behind when he fled pre-World War II Europe, and an exploration into family identity, myth, and memory. Years after her grandfather s death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled Correspondence: Patients A G. What she found inside weren t dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her family s prewar Vienna. One woman s letters stood out: those from Valy Valerie Scheftel her grandfather s lover, who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria. Valy s name wasn t unknown to her Wildman had once asked her grandmother about a dark-haired young woman whose images she found in an old photo album. She wasyour grandfather s true love, her grandmother said at the time, and refused any other questions. But now, with the help of the letters, Wildman started to piece together Valy s story. They revealed a woman desparate to escape and clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom. Obsessed with Valy s story, Wildman began a quest that lasted years and spanned continents. She discovered, to her shock, an entireworld of other people searching for the same woman. In the course of discovering Valy s ultimate fate, she was forced to reexamine the story of her grandfather s triumphant escape and how this history fit within her own life and in the process, she rescues a life seemingly lost to history. "