Three girls trying to complete a school assignment on World War II contact Marcel Delarue, an artist who grew up in France when it was occupied by the German army. In the letter he writes to the girls — that makes up the bulk of the book — Marcel describes how he and his two brothers, Ren and Pierre, took pride in their ability to successfully tell outrageous lies; the boys even befriend a Nazi soldier. What Marcel doesn’t know, though, is that the best liar in the family is his mother, who was hiding a Jewish family in their rural home for over a year without the boys knowing it. This sometimes humorous, sometimes sad story shows how ordinary people can become extraordinary heroes.
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