When Catholic Media Association Award-winning author Sarah Robsdottir lived in Nashville, while growing up for her father’s music career, she found herself exploring smaller Southern cities. One of the cities she found herself drawn to was Little Rock.
While she lives in northeast Pennsylvania now, where she homeschools her seven sons, thoughts of Little Rock occasionally drift through her mind.
“I have a great affection for small Southern cities like Little Rock, Arkansas,” the Catholic convert confessed.
Robsdottir has also always had a great devotion to Joan of Arc, the patron saint of France who, in spite of her youth and small stature, became a heroic defender of the French nation and her faith.
Both of these ideas began to brew in tandem in Robsdottir’s mind.
“The book really started germinating in my consciousness through my love of Joan of Arc, the soldier girl, a historical figure,” Robsdottir said. “I’ve always had a great devotion to her. She’s probably my all-time favorite saint. I was just daydreaming — a lot of my novel ideas come about through daydreaming when I take walks. … And I was just imagining — what would Joan of Arc be like if she lived today?”
While we often think of Joan of Arc as a determined warrior, at her core, she was still a young girl with familial troubles and feelings — not too different from other young people today.
“I was reflecting on things, like that fact that her father got drunk and he told her brothers to drown her; he also tried to force her into an arranged marriage, and he was furious,” she said. “I was reflecting on the reality that if she lived today, she might be put in foster care because of that. … Modern psychologists and social workers would say, ‘that girl is abused,’ and to take her out of that home. That’s a dysfunctional family. And yet, when you think of Joan of Arc, you don’t think of a teenage girl who’s from a dysfunctional family. You think of her as a hero, because she was. … People rarely think of her as someone who had a soft side. This is rarely portrayed in movies or books. After her victory at Orleans, there was a point in her life where she cried and she begged to just go home to her family — to the rolling hills, and to tend to her cows. So that’s another side I wanted to share with the public.”
Robsdottir didn’t want to tell a historical story. She wanted to portray Joan of Arc as a modern teenager, facing the battles that 21st-century teens face.
And so, “Joan of Arkansas” was published by Voyage Comics and Publishing, a Christian publisher based in Wisconsin City, Wis., in March.
This is Robsdottir’s second novel in three years. Her first book, “Brave Water,” a stand-alone novel about human trafficking, was released in 2022, and it received several Catholic Media Association Awards.
“Joan of Arkansas” revolves around Joanie Smith, a teenage girl who deals with an abusive mother and bullies at school while caring for her ailing grandmother. Joanie and her friends find themselves grappling with issues like opioid addiction and abortion, while trying to find their place in the world.
“It’s told in the first person, and then some chapters with other characters are told in the third person. But for a lot of it, we have a very intimate walk with Joanie as she navigates her life, and she prayerfully deals with things like bullies at high school, so she faces challenges that most modern teens face — the desire to fit in, the desire to be popular, and she faces challenges large and small.”
Robsdottir takes the time in her novel to highlight the role of nature in Arkansas.
“I wish I could have portrayed Little Rock itself in more of its beauty, because there’s many beautiful aspects to Little Rock,” she said. “It’s a small city where there’s a lot of nature surrounding it by the river. So there are some scenes where Joanie’s climbing her favorite tree and she looks out over the river and she’s able to really see the beauty of nature there in the river. And I put that in on purpose and specifically for people from Little Rock and who love Little Rock, because it is such a challenging story in the sense that so much of Joanie’s life is dark. … Joanie’s story is going to be a ‘rise above adversity’ story.”
Father Michael Rennier, a married Catholic priest, who lives in St. Louis with his wife and five children, wrote a review of “Joan of Arkansas” for Aleteia May 21.
“When I say that ‘Joan of Arkansas’ is challenging, I do not mean that it was an unpleasant read. I read the entire book in only two days because I kept picking it up in every spare moment I had. The characters are likable and the storylines are compelling,” he wrote. “There was challenging material in there, to be sure, but overall the novel is a story of heroism, forgiveness and hope. It’s about how God’s grace is operative in every situation, and there is beauty in every single life. The challenge found in the book is a redemptive challenge.”
The 371-page book is available in paperback on Amazon for $14.99 and as a Kindle digital version for $9.99. You can buy “Joan of Arkansas” now on Amazon at https://a.co/d/9CWeb6r.
