Historic Girlhoods, Part One

What did Joan of Arc dream of before she led armies? What tortures of faith drove Saint Catherine of Siena to madness and ecstasy? This collection traces the forgotten years of women who would become legends, revealing the moment each girl first heard her own destiny calling. We see Catherine of Siena as a defiant teenager, starving herself for God and warring with a mother who wanted her married. We witness Vittoria Colonna learning to wield poetry as armor in Renaissance Italy. Each portrait captures that fragile, ferocious threshold between girlhood and greatness. Holland writes with early 20th-century reverence, but his real gift is showing us the human texture behind the halo: the loneliness, the doubt, the unshakeable conviction that would not let these young women rest. For anyone curious about how legends begin, and what it costs to become one.