About this book

"For more than five hundred years, the story of Joan of Arc has been an inspiration and a mystery. The least likely of heroines, a peasant girl with no education and no prospects, Joan turned herself into the legendary Maid of Orleans, knight, martyr, and saint. Following a voice she knew was God's, she led an army to victory in battle and crowned the king of France, only to be captured by her English enemies and burned at the stake as a heretic - all by the age of nineteen.". "Mary Gordon brings Joan to life through the lens of her own celebrated sensibility. With a novelist's understanding of character, Gordon does more than tell Joan's story - she explores Joan's mystery, the contradictions and secret desires that propelled her from obscurity to glory."--BOOK JACKET.