J'Accuse (A Medieval Crime and the Servant Girl Who Changed History)

She was a servant with no voice. He was a predator with powerful friends. She refused to stay silent—and changed history.

Normandy, 1429. The Hundred Years’ War rages, Joan of Arc is leading the resistance, and the English occupy the land. In the midst of this chaos, a young, lowborn servant named Jeanne Corvière attends a hiring fair, hoping for a fresh start. Instead, she meets a sergeant of the law who lures her away with a lie about a wife in labor.

What follows is a brutal assault in a dense forest and a shocking act of corruption. When Corvière seeks justice, she discovers the investigation has been mysteriously rigged. But she refuses to accept defeat. She launches a decade-long legal battle that takes her to the high courts of Rouen. Her quest for justice will shake the very foundations of the French legal system.

It is a pattern we know all too well: predatory behavior by men of elite classes whose victims are women of a lower status, whose bodies they believe they can appropriate. Many women in Corvière’s place would have given up. But she did not.

Jeanne Corvière’s riveting true story has never been told, until now.