This is the story of a young girl who died when she was nineteen.  She was no beauty and no scholar.  She could neither read nor write.  She came from the obscurity of a small, remote hamlet and in less than fifteen months had crowned a king, set in motion events that were to save her country from foreign domination, defeated the forces of a great nation, and changed the history of Western Europe.  She was burned to death as a heretic.  Nearly five hundred years later she was canonized and became the patron saint of the country she saved.  It is one of the most astonishing stories in history.  This is an attempt to tell it simply but accurately and to peel away the smothering husk in which some historians have enclosed it.  It is a task I have enjoyed and I hope that what I have done will enable others to feel the magic of those far-off summer days when this young girl, astride her charger, rode conquering through the fields and woods of France.  But it is far more than the story of a conquest, far more than a medieval pageant.  It is the story of a great saint - Joan of Arc. Imprimatur: Francis Cardinal Spellman, Archbishop of New York, 7/27/1959