The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau

Book Reviews

May 11

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau Book Cover

The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau
By: Kristin Harmel

[On my list of Most Anticipated Books of 2025]

“Diamonds have witnessed the past, and they will witness a future we can’t begin to imagine.”

At this point I’ve read five of her books and loved them all. Harmel just has a way of storytelling that is so compelling and touches on all your emotions. She has a knack for finding and creating unique WWII stories around regular people doing heroic things to help others.

In the Stolen Life of Colette Marceau Harmel explores how people stole from the Nazis in order to help the Resistance. In this particular story, Colette Marceau is a jewel thief, taught by her mother. In fact, it’s been a ‘family business’ of sorts as they descend from Robin Hood. They live by the code: steal from the bad, give to the poor.

“‘No one who has earned his money or his worldly possessions honestly should be parted from them, even if he’s far richer than anyone should be. But he who has evil in his heart, or has used his fortune to bring harm to others, no longer has a claim on his property. Those are the people Robin stole from then, and they’re the people we steal from now.’”

Side note: if this concept intrigues you, definitely check out Connie Mann’s book The Crown Conspiracy which is an awesome book but instead of a Robin Hood jewel thief, the main character steals previously stolen artwork and replaces them with forgeries, returning the originals to their rightful owners.

I enjoyed the concept of this book. I enjoyed the characters. I liked that we get another taste of WWII from a different angle but it was also nice not to get into the nitty gritty of the war. There were definitely segments that were hard to read— like Colette’s mother’s arrest and torture. At times we need to confront the past in all its realities, but sometimes I prefer a ‘lighter’ book that doesn’t throw you in too deep.

I think I’ve read so many books that the ‘twists’ this book ends up having weren’t really surprising to me, but I wasn’t mad about it.

I also liked the themes Harmel explores: How is right and wrong determined? Is our identity more than what we do or more than our ‘destiny’? Can a lifetime of good wash away a long-ago sin? How and to what extent do we let our history shape our future?

I also love the thread of ‘diamonds are forever’ and what that means historically— that they get passed down from generation to generation and what they’ve ‘seen’ or been through could fill tomes.

It is aptly named— The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau— and has a complex meaning— the actual theft of jewelry but also the ‘theft’ of life, physically and emotionally, the ‘theft’ of an identity, the ‘theft’ of what could have been.

As with a lot of historical fiction novels, we have a dual timeline.

The historic timeline takes place during WWII where a young Colette is experiencing the hardships of the war. When their Jewish friends are rounded up and their jewels stolen, Colette’s mother steals them back from the Nazi who took them. This puts their whole family in danger. Colette experiences a lot of loss, including the kidnapping and death of her younger sister.

The modern day timeline (2018) follows 89-year-old Colette who now lives in the states and continues to steal from Neo-Nazis to help fund the Boston Center for Holocaust Education and other charities. All these years she has still wondered what happened to her sister and who betrayed her mother, leading to her arrest.

What ultimately ties these two timelines together is a very special set of bracelets. Handcrafted with hundreds of diamonds, these interlocking bracelets were designed for Colette’s mother’s friend Helene Rosman by her husband in honor of her newly born twins. Separate they look like lilies; together it’s a beautiful butterfly.

“‘It’s perfect… Helene and I will give our children wings and they will soar.’”

These bracelets are what Colette’s mom steals back and sews into the hem of Colette and her sister’s gowns for safe-keeping and bargaining power if they ever get into a bind.

Colette kept her bracelet her whole life, searching for the other half and the answers regarding her sister. The bracelet shows up in a new museum exhibit in Boston and Colette is determined to find out who it belongs to and what they know about the past, not matter the cost.

Many historical fiction novels that tell WWII stories in dual timeline have an elderly person in the modern timeline but I loved that in this book even though Colette is 89 years old, she’s still very much an active character, not just a reminiscent one and I appreciated that about this book. Also, it’s a little funny to picture her still stealing from people— she’s correct that no one would suspect her!

One of the more interesting aspects of this book is the moral dilemma of what Colette’s family does. Is it ever okay to steal?

I think during war-time, when people are being wrongfully rounded up and killed, to steal from the perpetrators in order to finance papers to help people escape that fate, it’s hard to not see that as heroic.

But this line of thinking can be a slippery slope. Harmel intentionally wrote about this morally gray-ish area and mentions it in the author’s note. She comments how “it was fascinating to explore how someone like Colette rationalizes her thefts— and to ask myself whether that reasoning is valid.”

It’s easy to look back on WWII and be thankful for those who lied or stole in order to save lives, but I’m not entirely sure how much biblical support that position has. I also think that humans are really good at justifying things and bad at making fair, unbiased judgements. I’m glad for what people did during the war to save people, but I don’t know if my feelings about it are necessarily biblical.

Even if the US is not currently at war, I’ve already seen examples of people justifying violence or destruction or theft just because people had different beliefs than them. There are certain groups of people pushing to classify certain words or phrases as acts of violence. If we start labeling words as acts of violence then that becomes the catalyst to justify morally wrong actions.

I don’t trust humanity to make really good judgments on what is right and wrong and what is justified and what is not. Sure, we may all agree on WWII acts of rebellion but all of humanity can’t agree on everything all the time. At some point we’re going to be on different sides of what we believe is justified. Then how do we determine?

Our selfishness and sin nature are too strong to ever support this notion that it’s okay to steal from the bad and give to the good. The working definitions of ‘bad’ and ‘good’ are too fluid.

I do like that Harmel points out that Colette bettered the world in more ways than just stealing diamonds— “through her volunteer work— and through the way she chose to show up for Aviva in her darkest hour.”

We are often short-sighted, thinking the only way to solve a problem or bringing good to the world is using morally gray means to achieve a desired outcome, but if we use our critical thinking and creativity, we see that there are so many ways to make the world better than our own personally identified methods of ‘redistributing wealth.’

Sure, Colette ‘redistributed’ over 30 million dollars worth of goods, but it was no small thing for her to step into Aviva’s life and be a mother figure, to extend generosity and love with her time and her words. It’s often the small things that make more of an impact than some sort of flashy gesture or widespread action.

“Change happens one act of courage at a time, one act of kindness at at time, one act of faith at a time. And those are things that all of us are capable of.”

Another thing Harmel mentions in her author’s note that resonated with me was the idea of Colette’s identity being in her thieving.

“Colette has essentially spent her whole life clinging to the sense of identity that comes with being a thief… she’s a woman worthy of love, whose identity isn’t determined by her vocation…”

Even though Harmel does not look at this from a biblical perspective, I love how she has Colette’s character develop to the point of recognizing that her identity has been wrapped up in stealing. It’s their family’s legacy; it’s a way she feels close to her mom. But it’s also been a big burden for her to carry. A burden that she is afraid to relieve herself of because if she isn’t stealing like Robin Hood, then who is she, what good is she?

We do the same thing. We believe so much of who we are is tied up in our jobs or our kids, our hobbies, or even our sexuality. But if those things are taken away (and they can), we are left feeling empty and purposeless. Our identity has to be outside of those things.

The Bible has the answer to satisfy that longing. Our identity should be in Christ who is an unchanging constant in our life. If we are children of God that can’t be taken away from us. It is security instead of a burden.