In 1429, a 17-year-old peasant girl receives a message from Heaven that she is to rescue France from its English oppressors. Within two years this most unlikely of heroines leads a ragtag army to victory, sees the king crowned, and dies at the stake, martyred by traitors.

America's most famous storyteller, Mark Twain, was obsessed with the story of Joan of Arc, and labored 12 years to tell it in this novel, which he considered his masterpiece.