This book was one of my all time favourites when I was younger - it had adventure, a sassy heroine, an interesting historical setting, and just a touch of romance, so it really hit all the marks back then. Reading the book now, there’s still a lot of appeal here, even if the language and narrative is simplified for a younger audience. Bradford gets her readers into the thick of one of history’s most important events, the People’s Crusade, alongside protagonist Ursula, a young German girl who travels alongside her father who has been hired to act as Count Emil’s personal healer. Ursula’s father is swept up in the holy mania of the Crusade, but his choice to go along is also to save Ursula’s life; she has been accused and found guilty of witchcraft for practising her father’s healing arts, and going on the Crusade to Jerusalem will cleanse her of her perceived sins. To modern readers, the concept of these holy wars seems kind of insane, considering that we know in hindsight that the Crusades did very little to “save” the Holy Lands, so we automatically sympathize with Ursula’s viewpoint that religious mania should at least be questioned, but Bradford makes an effort to show us how religion really was a driving factor in the lives of the general population at the time. Some, like Ursula and her father, went along not just to fulfill a religious obligation, but also as a practical means to an end to support themselves - or were just thrown into the situation, as can happen. While Bradford’s narrative was a bit choppy at times, I found the characters well-developed and believable, which goes a long way to opening up historical stories. ( )