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Paper Love Searching for the Girl My Grandfather Left BehindDescription
One womans 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 grandfathers death, journalist Sarah Wildman stumbled upon a cache of his letters in a file labeled Correspondence: Patients AG. What she found inside werent dry medical histories; instead what was written opened a path into the destroyed world that was her familys prewar Vienna. One womans letters stood out: those from ValyValerie Scheftelher grandfathers lover, who had remained behind when he fled Europe six months after the Nazis annexed Austria.
Valys name wasnt unknown to herWildman had once asked her grandmother about a dark-haired young woman whose images she found in an old photo album. She wasyour grandfathers 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 Valys story. They revealed a woman desparate to escape and clinging to the memory of a love that defined her years of freedom.
Obsessed with Valys 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 Valys ultimate fate, she was forced to reexamine the story of her grandfathers triumphant escape and how this history fit within her own life and in the process, she rescues a life seemingly lost to history.