“Joan of Arkansas” by Sarah Robsdottir. Voyage Comics and Publishing. (Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. 2025.) 371 pp., $14.99
“I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”
This quote by St. Joan of Arc, the famous girl soldier and martyr, can often feel more aspirational than accurate to modern Catholics. Looking at the paintings or stained-glass images of saints from bygone days can leave one feeling a bit depressed and remote from their sanctity; after all, those holy acts and glorious martyrdoms belong to yesteryear, happening “once upon a time.” But what might a Joan of Arc figure look like in our own day and place? In her new novel, “Joan of Arkansas,” Sarah Robsdottir presents us with a compelling possibility.
Meet Joanie, a teenage girl growing up in an impoverished neighborhood of Little Rock, Arkansas. Named after the famous saint, Joanie’s life is anything but picturesque: her mother suffers from unmedicated bipolar disorder, and her grandmother, Joanie’s erstwhile guardian, has suffered a recent stroke. The family’s financial situation is dire, and Joanie is far from popular at the Catholic school she attends on scholarship, where she is tormented relentlessly by two wealthier students. The only bright spots in her life are Sister Jean, the “fun nun” who runs the home economics classroom, and her friend Stella, whom Joanie has recently blown off to appease a more popular crowd.
Joanie’s life is marked by another near-miss of a tragedy: every day on her way home, she passes by the same clinic where her mother nearly decided to abort her. When she sees one of her bullies attempting to enter the clinic one night, however, her already chaotic life quickly becomes a lot more complicated as she is called to heroic acts of courage and forgiveness.
“Joan of Arkansas” is to be commended for its frankness and unflinching commitment to the pro-life principle that every life is worth living. From Joanie herself — born from an unwanted pregnancy to an often abusive mother — to a woman plagued by debilitating health problems, to several individuals suffering from homelessness and even a baby conceived through consensual incest between stepsiblings, the characters put to lie the pro-choice myth that a child conceived under less-than-ideal circumstances is better off not born. In place of trite platitudes, Robsdottir puts her characters through their paces, especially Joanie, on whose shoulders she sets the responsibility of protecting a human life. The characters feel vivid and real: Joanie’s fear and at times even cowardice are movingly human, and characters who start out seeming a bit like caricatures soon reveal themselves to have unforeseen depths.
In this reviewer’s opinion, there are a few missteps in the story on an artistic level — for example, a character’s unexpected betrayal near the end of the book seems to happen without a clear cause, and then the conflict disappears again from the text without a satisfying resolution — and there are several excellent but harrowing scenes which may render the novel too intense for more sensitive young readers. For mature teenagers, however, “Joan of Arkansas” is a must-read story of how God has a purpose for every life — not merely in spite of difficult circumstances, but oftentimes even working through them.
