A Letter from Kristin Harmel

Dear Reader, 

 

I’ve spent the last decade and a half writing stories that place ordinary people in seemingly impossible situations during World War II, and I’ve realized I’ve been asking myself a question again and again in each of those books: What would I do if I found myself in great darkness?  

 

That’s a question that countless civilians faced during the Second World War, and there were as many answers as there were people caught in the middle between good and evil, victory and defeat. But in The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, the questions go even further. Is it okay to do something illegal in wartime if you’re working toward a greater good? And if it is, do the rules change when the war ends? Is there still justification in doing something against the law, even when the life and death stakes have disappeared? 

 

I think the answers to those questions lie in the gray area between right and wrong. And as a writer, it has always been that vast and nebulous gray that intrigues me. Do righteous ends balance out illegal means? Or are illegal means in and of themselves a subversion of justice? 

 

These are the questions the characters must ask themselves in The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, which takes place in both World War II-era Paris and 2018 Boston as we follow a jewel thief named Colette who has been stealing from the cruel and unkind for nearly her entire life and redistributing the proceeds to those in need. During World War II, she works alongside her mother, using jewels stolen from Nazis and collaborators to fund the French Resistance. But when the war ends, she keeps stealing—and that’s where the moral gray area gets even murkier. 

 

I hope that as you read The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau, you’ll think about the direction your own moral compass might point if you were in her situation. I hope the book will spark discussion about who ultimately gets to define right and wrong. And finally, as you go on this journey with Colette, who’s forced to ask herself many of these same questions, I hope you’ll be rooting for her to find her way to some peace at long last. 

 

I wrote this book just after completing chemotherapy and radiation for breast cancer, and I think you’ll also see in these pages a lot of the questions I was asking myself at the time about legacy, the meaning of our lives, and the importance of what we leave behind. And as is the case with many of my books, you’ll see Paris through the lens of war—but also through the eyes of people who would do anything to defend their fellow man in the City of Light. 

 

I hope you’ll come to Paris with me through the pages of The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau. And as always, I wish you your own happily ever after, wherever you are. 

 

xo, 

Kristin