Book Review: Stolen by Elizabeth Jaeger

Reviewed by Gabriella Harrison

In the year the world shut down, one family learned how much could be stolen in a single month.

Elizabeth Jaeger’s Stolen starts as a pandemic diary and becomes something far heavier. The shift happens on Day eight, when her father gets sick. Before that, it’s all Chromebook meltdowns and Taekwondo cancellations—the kind of stuff everyone remembers from early lockdown. After that, it’s a different book entirely.

Jaeger aptly captures the absurd stress of March 2020 in the early pages. There’s her son’s failed Zoom call, the fight over homeschool curriculum, and the universal parental dread of online learning videos. “I hate technology. It is beyond me,” she remarks. The prose is wholly unvarnished. When her kid screams, “You need to help me, and only me!” it feels real and relatable.

Then the virus hits home. Her father’s decline is documented in brutal, ticking-clock detail: the 4:33 AM ambulance call, the ventilator, the hospital transfers. What sticks isn’t the medical jargon but the small horrors, like the FedEx package of his belongings arriving after his death, still packed with the clothes he thought he’d wear home.

Jaeger’s anger is raw and specific. She rages at the celebrity testing scandals (“How rich do you have to be in this country for someone to care about you?”), the funeral delays, even the way her father’s doctor vanishes for two weeks. But the quiet moments cut deeper. Her son making Mickey Mouse pancakes alone or texting his dead grandfather’s iPad is evocative.

The “Snapshot Rewind” sections contrast and complement the hospital updates. One memory of her dad coaching Little League is especially moving when read against his ICU stats. Another, about teaching her son cursive because “civilized people write in cursive,” becomes a eulogy in miniature.

Some entries ramble; others simply express a profound grief. There are occasional instances of repetition, especially when circling her regrets (not hugging him at the hospital, not visiting sooner). But that’s the point. Real grief doesn’t have perfect pacing.

By the end, the book’s title makes terrible sense. COVID stole time, rituals, last words. What’s left is this: a messy, howling thing that refuses to offer comfort or closure.

In Elizabeth Jaeger’s memoir, Stolen, emotions spill over without restraint. At times, the prose is ragged, but that’s part of its power. This isn’t a book about COVID-19 as a historical event; it’s about the human cost of that event, the families shattered in its wake. By the final entry, as she relaxes on the beach with her son, there’s no illusion of returning to what life once was. But in that stillness, there’s a quiet acceptance and the sense that moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting, only learning how to carry what remains.

Elizabeth Jaeger’s Stolen is a heartrending, necessary read. One that provides a poignant account that will resonate with many families who lost loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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