The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France

A wounded soldier. A priest. And the ghost of a peasant girl who changed France. Pierre Duval has survived the trenches, but not without cost. Shrapnel tore through his body, and something darker tore through his soul. He fled the front lines in panic, and now the shame of that flight festers alongside his physical wounds. When Father Antoine Courcy finds him, broken in both body and spirit, the priest does not offer easy absolution. Instead, he offers something more radical: a pilgrimage. Through the fields and villages that shaped Joan of Arc, Courcy leads Duval on a journey through France's past toward something like redemption. Written in 1919, when the Great War's wounds were still raw, Henry Van Dyke understood that the deepest injuries resist the simplest cures. This is not inspirational fiction. It is a clear-eyed reckoning with cowardice, faith, and the terrible grace of choosing to return to the fight. For readers who know that courage and fear often share the same heart.