Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against the medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn to read and write. When her older brother is killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak and identity, goes to the monastery of Fulda, and is initiated into the brotherhood in his place. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan distinguishes herself as a great Christian scholar. Eventually she is drawn to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest throne in Christendom. Pope Joan is a sweeping historical drama set against the turbulent events of the ninth century - the Saracen sacking of St. Peter's; the famous fire in the Borgo that destroyed over three quarters of the Vatican; and the Battle of Fontenoy, arguably the bloodiest and most terrible of medieval conflicts. The novel is a fascinating, vivid record of what life was really like during the so-called Dark Ages, a masterwork of suspense and passion that has as its center an unforgettable woman, reminiscent of Dorothea in George Eliot's Middlemarch, Jane Austen's Emma, and other heroines who struggle against restrictions their souls will not accept.