Kristin Harmel

First, there are a lot of characters — but the way their stories intertwine is so beautifully done that I found myself completely absorbed. Julia and Piper’s story might be the one that stayed with me the most: a mother and daughter taking their final trip together to Paris. Julia, forty‑nine and dying, holding on to every moment with her daughter… their chapters were tender, aching, and unforgettable.

But then there’s Henry — and his story nearly broke me. A man who spent his show more entire life believing the love of his life was gone, only to discover she was alive in a care home. He crossed an ocean to see Celeste, who no longer remembered him because of her amnesia. The quiet heartbreak of that reunion… it was devastating and beautiful all at once.

And I can’t forget Jackson Quick — the musician returning to the stage after ten years of silence, stepping into his anniversary concert with all the weight of his past. His story had such a soulful pull.

So yes, there are many characters — but once you settle into their lives, you fall for every single one of them.

I just couldn’t stop reading. Each story was romantic, heartbreaking, or quietly powerful — written with such depth that I felt like I was right there in Paris with them. Wandering through bookstores, sipping coffee in cozy cafés, stepping into bars, and walking around the Notre Dame Cathedral… it all felt vivid, emotional, and alive. show less

I gave THE STOLEN LIFE OF COLETTE MARCEAU, the latest historical fiction from Kristin Harmel, five stars - for the sheer enjoyment I had navigating a complex plot so full of surprises. The novel captured and held my attention throughout even though I found the final resolution a bit too pat.

The story of Colette Marceau unfolds in alternating chapters between two time periods. The first begins in 1927 with the design of a beautiful bracelet. Colette grows up in pre World War II Paris, living show more with her parents and younger sister. And that part of the story ends with the end of the war. The second time period is 2018 where Colette is a spry octogenarian living in New York City.

Colette's family has one very big secret. Her mother comes from a long line of jewel thieves with a Robin Hood ethos. For generations, members of this family have stolen from those they consider immoral or evil and redistributed valuables in an effort to make the world more just.

Also key to Colette's story is one horrible night in 1942 when her four-year-old sister Liliane disappears. Her disappearance becomes the focus of Colette's life. Feeling responsible, she feels a primal need to find out what happened to her sister. Who was responsible? And what became of a one-of-a-kind diamond bracelet that had been secretly sewn into her sister's nightgown?

THE STOLEN LIFE OF COLETTE MARCEAU is a page-turner full of unexpected twists and turns. The characters are deep, varied, and completely believable. The motivations for the actions they take are always believable. Even the bad guys. All of which fully makes up for what I felt was a denouement that was a little too neat. Why? Because the ride through this novel is worth it. show less

Opening in 2005, this historical novel looks back at the life of 85-year-old Eva Traube Abrams, now living in Florida. At her local library, Eva saw a New York Times report about a Berlin man named Otto Kuhn, who was trying to reunite owners with newly recovered books stolen by the Nazis. He was posing with a picture of one of the books - Epitres et Evangiles. Eva recognized it right away, because 60 years ago, it used to be hers.

The book had served as a repository for crucial information show more Eva encoded inside. She thought it had been lost forever. Now, she seized on the chance to retrieve what she thought was lost forever, and flew to Berlin that night.

The story then jumps back to Paris in July of 1942. Eva, a 23-year-old college student, was living in Paris with her parents, Jewish immigrants from Poland.

Germans had occupied Paris since 1940. (The French government moved to Vichy, France where it tried to operate in exile. Vichy, France was officially independent, but in deference to the Nazis, it adopted a policy of collaboration.) In July, 1942, over 13,000 Jews were rounded up in Paris by the French police acting on orders of the Nazis. They were sent to concentration camps. [For those familiar with Holocaust history, this was the famous “Vélodrome d'Hiver roundup,” the largest French deportation of Jews during the Holocaust, which primarily targeted foreign and immigrant Jews.]

Eva’s father was one of those picked up. (She and her mother were serendipitously staying at a neighbors that night.)

Eva and her mother managed to escape to Aurignon, a small town in Vichy, France. Madame Barbier, the woman who rented them a room in Aurignon, could see that the documents Eva and her mother had were forgeries, albeit good ones. Fortunately, she was part of a local resistance group led by Père Clement, a young Catholic priest. Madame Barbier alerted the priest that Eva could be useful to them with a little training, and he in turn asked for Eva's help.

Most of the rest of the book details Eva’s work creating fake documents for the resistance in Aurignon. She worked alongside Rémy Duchamp, a brave member of the French Resistance, who helped Eva perfect the craft. Harmel based this part of the novel on the real-life story of people in the town of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, whose residents helped thousands of Jews and other hunted refugees elude the Nazis. They not only hid them in and around the village, but helped make authentic-looking identification documents for them to escape across the border to neutral Switzerland, and sometimes even escorted them to safety themselves.

The character of Père Clement was no doubt inspired by Protestant Pastor André Trocmé in Le Chambon, and the activities of Eva and her fellow-forger Remy Duchamp and later Genevieve, echoed those of actual resistance members, in particular Adolfo Kaminsky and Oscar Rosowsky, both forgers who helped rescue thousands of Jews.

[Kaminsky joined the French Resistance at age 17. The remarkable story of his life is told in a book by his daughter Sarah Kaminsky, A Forger’s Life. The book's episode of Eva frantically producing children's documents overnight was inspired by a Kaminsky anecdote. He recalled that some 300 children needed papers immediately. Thus, 900 documents had to be created. Kaminsky remembered: “The math was simple. In one hour, I make 30 fake documents. If I slept for one hour, 30 people would die.” Kaminsky persevered. The papers were forged and the children avoided deportation.

Oscar Rosowsky worked in Le Chambon, setting up a forgery workshop, and came up with some of the methods Eva and Remy used in the book to copy official seals and duplicate them. His story is told by Peter Grose in The Greatest Escape: How One French Community Saved Thousands of Lives from the Nazis.]

Eva wanted to preserve the real names of the children for whom she made fake documents, and Remy taught her how to encrypt them inside an obscure religious book, Epitres et Evangiles. But after the Nazis came and raided the church, the book was thought to be lost, until its discovery in Berlin 60 years later.

Discussion: There are outstanding, inspirational stories from the dark time of the Holocaust, and the author’s incorporation of some of them into this book is admirable. But her retelling pales against the real life stories for several reasons. Most importantly, it is difficult to like the main character, Eva. She is incredibly naive and ill-informed for 23, and too focused on herself to see what is going on around her, such as: Nazi takeover of Paris. Her mother is even worse. She embodies the worst stereotypes of Jewish mothers, obsessed above all else that Eva should find “a nice Jewish boy” to marry, and then turns absolutely evil after their forced exile. In an absurd turn, she blames Eva for all of it: the Nazi’s taking her husband, their having to leave, giving up their apartment, and their new situation in Aurignon. (Mother: “You let them take him! You knew they were coming and you just stood there and did nothing.”) Then, when Eva starts to work for the resistance movement, the mother blames her for deserting the Jewish faith by working with a priest (who is, needless to say, working to save Jews). She resents the time Eva spends helping: “You are in your own world, Eva, and there’s no room for me in it.” (It is unclear what that would involve besides sitting with her mother in the boarding house all day, bemoaning their fate.). Even more absurdly, Eva actually accepted her mother’s characterization of everything, blaming herself as well! What kind of warped narcissism allowed her to agree with her mother that, for example, it was she, not the Nazis, who caused everything that happened? Further, as her love for (non-Jewish) Remy developed, she obsessed that it was a “betrayal” of her parents. Silly, egotistical, immature: thank goodness she had a talent that could be used to save desperate people, or she would be totally unsympathetic.

Evaluation: Many people today are not aware of all of the non-military efforts made by ordinary citizens in Europe to oppose the genocidal agenda of the Nazis and to resist them in any way, no matter small. These efforts included documenting Nazi war crimes and keeping those documents hidden to use later for evidence; hiding people in their homes at great personal risk; and forging papers for those who could find a safe country which would take them (the latter not always easy). Therefore I appreciated the attention the book gave to some of these acts of defiance, but I think readers could find more satisfying stories about the brave civilian resistance movements in Europe than this one. They range from non-fiction memoirs, like The Art of Resistance: My Four Years in the French Underground by Justus Rosenberg to well-crafted fiction, like A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell. show less

The story opens in 2005, when a book that had been looted by Nazis is found. Eva, a women in her eighties working at a library, recognizes it as the Book of Lost Names and, though she thought her past was far behind her, she decides to go back and get it. Then we're brought back to 1942, where young Eva Traube is living in Paris with her Polish Jewish parents, and her father is arrested in a roundup. Her art skills come in handy as she crafts new identity cards for her and her mother to show more travel to a small town in the Free Zone and hopefully to freedom in Switzerland. But then she meets Pere Clement and Remy, resistance workers who could use her skill in forgeries.

This is what I think of as historical fiction lite. It is researched, but it wears this lightly and isn't the focus of the story. The focus is, instead, on the characters' relationships, with the time frame more of a back drop than center stage. And while this sort of World War 2 fiction is very popular with my library patrons (and the book world in general, judging by the number of titles being turned out regularly), at this point in my reading life I'm looking for something with a little more meat to it. So when all Eva and her mother can talk about is that Eva's leaving behind their Jewish heritage but the only Jewish holiday that comes up is Hanukkah (twice), coincidences abound (I can't explain more without major spoilers), several characters' choices and motivations don't get explored, and I figure out a major plot twist early on, I'm left feeling like something's missing. show less