St. Joan of Arc was the peasant girl of Domremy who led the armies of France and is a Catholic saint. Why would Heaven select the most obscure corner of a kingdom at war to save a nation, and how did a thirteen-year-old child in her father's garden find the courage to answer?
Before La Pucelle ever rode a warhorse, she was an illiterate girl weeping in the summer light as St. Michael withdrew from her sight. This volume opens the hidden years of her early life in the frontier hamlet of Domremy, where the Hundred Years War burned local churches and forced families into the night. The narrative traces the slow, divine preparation of her soul over five years, from the prayers she learned at the knee of her mother Isabelle Romée to the frequent visitations of St. Catherine and St. Margaret. The history follows her through the crushing humiliation of her first rejected visit to Vaucouleurs with her uncle Durand Laxart, ending as two young knights finally believe her in the bitter cold of January 1429.
- The chosen village: an exploration of Domremy and the catastrophe of the Treaty of Troyes.
- Five patient years: a close look at how her Voices deepened her practice of confession and her love of the Mass.
- Neighbors bearing witness: the sworn testimony of childhood friends like Hauviette and Mengette at the Rehabilitation Trial.
- An unyielding call: the quiet evening she left home without saying goodbye to her parents to raise the siege of Orléans.
Book One of The Maid of Heaven: A Three-Part Life of St. Joan of Arc. After exploring the quiet preparation of the young saint in this volume, the narrative follows her military battles of holy obedience and eventual imprisonment in Go Forward Bravely. The final volume, The Fire That Would Not Die, examines her posthumous vindication and the lasting spiritual lessons of her calling.
Readers seeking to understand how a peasant child learned to speak with saints in her garden, why she endured the humiliation of her initial rejection at Vaucouleurs, and what divine instruction readied her soul for a holy mission.
