During Joan's youth, a prophecy circulating in the French countryside, based on the visions of Marie Robine of Avignon [ fr], promised an armed virgin would come forth to save France.

Scholars at the University of Paris argued that she failed to take Paris because her inspiration was not divine. In early 1430, Joan organized a company of volunteers to relieve Compiègne, which had been besieged by the Burgundians—French allies of the English. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged.

The novel is presented as a translation by "Jean Francois Alden" of memoirs by Sieur Louis de Conte, a fictionalized version of Joan of Arc's page Louis de Contes.

He relates that Paris was then tormented by mobs, criminals, and other instabilities and that his parents had been persecuted there because they supported the King of France against his enemies the English and Burgundians.

He told the story of the day when he approached Twain as a young boy to profess his adulation for Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. A former Children’s Laureate, Michael is also the co-founder, with his wife Clare, of the charity Farms for City Children. Her Joan is a riotous tomboy, a hot-headed adolescent and a decidedly unsaintly soldier – and is all the more inspiring for it.

In the forward Twain's fictional Sieur Louis de Conte presents himself in the year 1492—more than 60 years after Joan of Arc's death in 1431—as writing his "Personal Recollections . She has examined the court documents from Joan of Arc's 1431 Inquisition trial for heresy and woven the facts together with an analysis of the histories, biographies, plays, and paintings and sculptures that have appeared over time to honor this heroine and symbol of France's nationhood.

For breaking the condition that she not wear men's clothing again, Joan is convicted as a "relapsed heretic. This caused rumors that the Dauphin was not King Charles VI's son, but the offspring of an adulterous affair between Isabeau and the murdered duke of Orléans. He has written over 100 books and won many prizes, including the J M Barrie Award, the Smarties Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award and the Whitbread Award.