Although the novel is written with a contemporary setting, Joan’s  voice is interspersed throughout  the novel.  She opens with these words:

Domrémy, France

February 1428

Since the thirteenth season of my life, I have heard the voices of Saints Margaret and Catherine and the Archangel Michael tell me I will drive the English from our land.  They say the Dauphin, our uncrowned king, will provide me with an army and that I will raise the siege of Orléans.  After that, I am instructed to take the Dauphin to Reims where he can be crowned and blessed with the sacred oil so he may take his rightful place on the throne as Charles VII.

I am now in my eighteenth season and it is time.  How do I know these things?  I am simple and devout but I have heard the Voice of God.  My angels.  I am Joan of Arc.

All my life we have sought refuge in neighboring castles when English soldiers raid our village.  All my life, I have watched my people run from them, or the men who are paid by the English to do their work.  When will this end?

From my infancy we have been under siege from these brutes who we hate.  They are enemies because they invade our land.  Let them leave us alone.  If they would leave us alone, they would not be our enemy.

As a girl, I hid and tried to stay childish, hoping I would not be swept up by a knight passing through as I had seen and heard all my life.  My heart was hardened to the English because they were the ones who cared little for our lives unless they might have a woman for pleasure and throw her away for others to do the same.  These spoiled maidens rarely returned, and if they did, remained harlots in our eyes, through no fault of their own.

But this night of all nights, like my wedding that will never be, I wait to begin my destiny and leave Domrémy.  My destiny will not be having children like my playmates have tendered, nor tending flocks in the fields or spinning and sewing.  I will lead the boys who are swept into service as soldiers to fight the legions they have no malice against, save that they disrupt the harvests.

I will have an audience with Captain Robert de Baudricourt at his castle in Vaucouleurs.  He will take me to the uncrowned king.  How is it possible that a simple girl like me would enter the court?  I am confident.  My voices have told me.  I will obey their directions.

At dawn I begin my journey to deliver France her rightful king and banish the English to their island.  But first there will be blood.  Although I have not shed my monthly blood, soon I will be able to say that my blood has been shed for the righteousness of France.

Can you imagine what it is like to be overrun by people who hate your soul?  Do you know what it is like to live in terror?  To think that at any moment the tranquility of a day in the pasture will be destroyed, the animals slaughtered and we, as chattel, running for our lives to the nearest shed?  It is on this, I have been raised.

Do I hate the English, who we call the goddamns? Yes I do, although I have never met one face to face.