Lost Diary of Joan of Arc: The Journey of the Church's True Heroine

A "Da Vinci Code" for the faith market, this dual-timeline thriller blends meticulous historical research with a modern archaeological mystery to reveal the human side of history’s most enigmatic warrior saint.

Her voices told her to save France. Her diary tells the rest.

In 1996, Vatican archaeologist Guiseppe Campise is pulled off a dig on Mount Ararat and handed a new assignment: find the rumored third diary of Joan of Arc, a record of her final days that the Church has been seeking for centuries.

His search leads him to an unfinished cathedral in Soissons, where tools vanish in the night and a motion-activated camera captures a figure in medieval chain mail moving through the shadows at 3 a.m. What Campise finds at the top of a sealed spiral staircase is not a ghost but something far stranger: a giant of a man who calls himself "Dwarf," living in self-imposed exile as the last guardian of Joan's lost writings.

The diary he protects is Joan's own account, recorded by the priests and notaries who walked beside her. It begins with a thirteen-year-old girl hearing a voice like a trumpet in her family's vegetable garden. It follows her through public humiliation, secret midnight rides across frozen enemy territory, and the blood-soaked walls of Orleans, where she pulled an arrow from her own shoulder and refused to let the trumpeter sound retreat. It ends where history says it must.

This is not the Joan of stained glass and statues. This is the girl who practiced riding in secret so no one would see her fall, who wept under tree branches on frozen ground, and who screamed the name of Jesus as the flames climbed.

Perfect for fans of The Da Vinci Code who want more heart, and readers of Francine Rivers who want more grit.