It's the fifteenth century during the Hundred Years War and Jehanne d'Arc is a dirty abused daughter of a farmer in Domremy France who is spoken to by God and the archangel Micheal and the saints Catherine and Margeret. She is instructed to drive the English from French soil and restore the rightful heir to the French crown to King Charles VII. We all know that Jehanne or "Joan", as we know of her, succeeds in her mission from God but how she gets there had me spellbound in this delightful graphic novel from Ms. Cutter.
Joan is a fierce warrior who leads ten thousand of France's best men into war and slaughters the mighty English army. But as the voices have warned her she would die in less than two years and she is taken prisoner by the English and thrown into prison to await her sentence of death by burning at the stake. She tries to kill herself by throwing herself over a tower 70 ft tower but is uninjured. The restored King has turned on her and refuses to pay her ransom and she is ultimately burned.
When I first saw this new book at the library, I walked right past it because I normally wouldn't read a war novel but the picture on the front cover got me. I went back to the shelf the book was propped up on and picked up, went home and started reading and didn't put it back down til I was done. I highly recommend this book even to those who wouldn't normally read historical fiction. It is fascinating, divine, and gruesome all at the same time.
Published in 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
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