If you ask after Mark Twain at a public library, they will mention many editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn but have no knowledge of this work. Yet Twain himself believed that Joan of Arc was his best book; it took him twelve years to research and two to write, while his other writings “needed no research and got none.” In his self-taught, roving youth he had stumbled across some random pages of Joan’s trial and had been struck by the power of the personality that thus revealed itself: the only story of a human life “that has come to us under oath.”

When, in the fullness of his literary talent, this famous humorist re-acquainted himself with the saint, he was again fascinated by her amazing and mysterious story: an unknown peasant girl from Domremy suddenly bursts into public consciousness and within a year has broken the long, oppressive English domination of France. Twain was not a Catholic or indeed a conventional believer; “Faith is believing what you know ain’t so” he once remarked. Yet he loved Joan and willingly suspended his scepticism in this account of her life. It is fictionalised, with an invented narrator, Sieur Louis de Conte, but remains faithful to the transcripts of Joan’s trial and later rehabilitation – a rich source for any biographer.

Everything that Twain conveys of her personality – her courage, simplicity, determination and honesty – are consonant with Joan’s responses to her judges and the testimonies of those who knew her. Condemned to be burnt as a witch, the only ‘magic’ about Joan was the aura of divine destiny which she radiated. Later on, psychiatrists (I have known one myself) have suggested her Voices were an infallible sign of schizophrenia; Twain dismisses them; “There was nothing the matter with her mind.”

Joan, though given great gifts by God, was no puppet of heaven as this novel demonstrates; at every stage of her short life (1412-31), in her youth, during her military campaigns and throughout her trial, she emerges, like other saints, as someone wholly and attractively human. For her unlikely American champion, “Taking into account her origin, youth, sex, illiteracy, early environment...she is by far the most extraordinary person the human race has ever produced.” There cannot be many other contenders. Published by Ignatius Press and distributed by Family Publications, this is superbly imaginative story-telling.

© 2009 Francis Phillips

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