Jehanne Darc, Book One

Book One: From Domrémy to Orléans

Jehanne Darc draws on the historical record to create a vivid, lyrical present-tense narrative of women at war. The first volume of a trilogy, Book One takes Jehanne Darc (later known as Jeanne d'Arc) from her origins to her first victory, at Orléans.

She was born 150 years earlier than Shakespeare, toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, back when Europe was made up less of nations than atomistic states, riven by warlords and their militias. Families were still losing children to the plague and to the war's accompanying violence against women and children. Her home province, Lorraine, wasn't yet part of France-something she fought to change all her life. She became a child soldier at sixteen, propelled by a set of voices she came to call the voice of God, fought the English occupiers and inspired her country's eventual unification years later. In Jehanne Darc, the young soldier has some magical powers, which her enemies call sorcery; they also hate that she wears men's battle dress.

In Book One, readers see her transformation from farm girl to warrior. They also meet her ally whose wealth and power prove essential to Jehanne's mission: her king's mother-in-law Yolande d'Aragon, Duchess of Anjou, also known as the "Queen of Four Kingdoms" (Aragon, Sicily, Cyprus, and Jerusalem). Together they marshal the armies that liberate Orleans by May 8, 1429.

Jehanne Darc is a Joan of Arc readers haven't seen before: traumatized by war, gender-defying, and magical in all the right ways. A superhero for our troubling times.