Until she was thirteen, Joan of Arc led a normal life. Then she began hearing voices. She believed these voices spoke for God. At first, they told her to be a good girl. A few years later, they told her that her destiny was to save France from its English invaders. Joan's inspirational leadership helped the French to defeat the English at the city of Orleans. Soon afterward, she persuaded the crown prince Charles to become King of France.

"A master of the story form" (The New York Times) offers a fresh, revealing portrait of the legendary saint Celebrated novelist Mary Gordon brings Joan of Arc alive as a complex figure full of contradictions and desires, as well as spiritual devotion. A humble peasant girl, Joan transformed herself into the legendary Maid of Orléans, knight, martyr, and saint. Following the voice of God, she led an army to victory and crowned the king of France, only to be captured and burned at the stake as a heretic—all by the age of nineteen. Gordon does more than tell this gripping story—she explores Joan's mystery and the many facets of her inspiring life.

In a distinguished English translation, the bestselling French book now considered the standard biography of Joan published just in time for the upcoming film by Luc Besson.

An historical biography of fifteenth-century saint and national heroine of France, Joan of Arc, that relies on the letters and testimony given at her trial.

Joan of Arc was perhaps the most wonderful person who ever lived in the world. The story of her life is so strange that we could scarcely believe it to be true, if all that happened to her had not been told by people in a court of law, and written down by her deadly enemies, while she was still alive. She was burned to death when she was only nineteen: she was not seventeen when she first led the armies of France to victory, and delivered her country from the English.

Joan of Arc was born in a small French village during the worst period of the Hundred Years' War. For generations, France had been besieged by the British. At age 11, Joan began to see religious visions telling her to join forces with the King of France. By the time she was a teenager, she was leading troops into battle in the name of her country. Though she was captured and executed for her beliefs, Joan of Arc became a Catholic saint and has since captured the world's imagination.