To Shine with Honor

Galien de Coudre, scholarly third son in a family of minor nobility, comes of age in the perilous world of late eleventh century France, where, despite the efforts of the Church to restrain their violence, powerful noblemen massacre the other and innocents in unending petty warfare over lands and power. Galien, educated for the priesthood, trained at arms and horse by his father and older brothers, all knights, finds his once-certain future as a high Church official compromised by dreadful misfortunes. Taking up the family profession of arms, he discovers his own destiny as events in France and the distant Holy Land draw inexorably towards the great war of faiths known in history as the First Crusade. The first of two volumes, To Shine with Honor - Book One: Coming of Age takes place in the medieval Kingdom of France between the years 1086 and 1096. Book Two, presently in progress, takes place in France and the Holy Land between 1177 and 1192.