Her earlier works include a biography of the 19th-century Carmelite sister St. The only sky Joan saw was through the grilled square of her one window.” And then, as Joan’s seventh and final trial concludes with condemnation: “Last days vanish quickly, even in a cell. Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured (Doubleday, 28.95) is Harrison’s 14th book. Among the disadvantages for her was that as she no longer hobbled back and forth between the keep and the castle’s great hall, she could no longer look forward to the respite of a few minutes outdoors, spring unfolding into the air, or of occupying a room other than her cell. “From Saturday, March 10, until Saturday, March 17,” she writes, “Joan was interrogated in her cell nine times. Perhaps most astounding about Harrison’s “Joan of Arc’’ is the seamlessness with which she pulls the camera way, way back to sweeping historic panoramas and thoughtful feminist commentary, then narrows the lens to give us detailed, lyrical close-ups that support her admiration for, and knowledge of, her subject. Joan of Arc, Kathryn Harrison renewed her Catholic faith in a way that surprised her: She discovered the Latin Mass. Born in 1412 into a France that had endured famine, crop failures, bubonic plague, and 75 years of enemy occupation, “Joan, who showcased her virginity as both proof and symbol of her virtue, believed God had punished the French because ‘it was his will to suffer them to be beaten for their sins.’ ” NEW YORK (CNS) Along the way to completing her new biography of St.
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