This history has been gleaned from the works of Ethnology by James Mooney and from word of mouth, as related to the author during the past thirty years. In the beginning of historical events, we hear of man in his paradisaical home, located somewhere within the boundaries known as ancient Egypt or Chaldea. His home was far away and his former history shrouded in the darkness of countless centuries of the past, and when we contemplate the remoteness of his ancestry, we become lost in the midst of our own research. When historical light began to flash from the Orient, we find man emerging with some degree of civilization from a barbaric state into the advanced degrees of civilized and enlightened tribes. When the maritime navigator, full of visions and dreams, dared to sail for those hitherto undiscovered shores, now known as America, there lived within the realm a wandering, happy, yet untutored, race of men whom we afterwards called Indians, who dwelt in great numbers along the whole distance from Penobscot Bay south to the everglades of Florida.

This acclaimed work on the life and mysticism of Joan of Arc is considered by historians as one of the most convincing, well researched and best written accounts of the Maid of Orleans. Stolpe vividly creates the contemporary situation in France during Joan's time, evaluates the latest research on her life, and arrives at an original and authentic portrait - one that is also a work of literature. Stolpe sees Joan of Arc as primarily a mystic, and her supreme achievement and lasting significance not so much in a mission to deliver France - though important - but in her sharing in the Passion of Christ. By shifting the emphasis from the national to the universal, Stolpe brings the saint closer to the modern reader. His scholarship is informed by a profound understanding and sympathy for the Maid, giving his essentially sober work the absorbing interest of a novel. As one critic stated, "Stolpe succeeds in producing a very tense interest, so that it is impossible to lay it aside until the last word is reached." This work should do much to present a new evaluation and appreciation of the life and mysticism of St. Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans.