It’s 1233, and Abel is returning to France after serving the sultan in Cairo as teacher, adviser, and friend for the past 21 years. Abel had left France as part of the glorious Children’s Crusade of 1212, which ended in total disaster: most of the young crusaders were sold into slavery, and their visionary leader – the shepherd boy Étienne, who was Abel’s closest friend – was martyred for his refusal to renounce his Christian faith. Now, as Abel journeys across France, he tries to find Blanche, a friend he left behind in that tumultuous summer of 1212, and pick up the pieces of their friendship abandoned all those many years ago.

Kathleen McDonnell vividly brings the 13th-century world of these child crusaders to life, but 1212 is also a novel that feels very contemporary in its exploration of the themes of religious intolerance, empire building, and war and peace.

What makes this treatment particularly memorable is the interplay of the three main protagonists, Étienne, Abel, and Blanche. While McDonnell uses Étienne to explore the historical facts of the Children’s Crusade, it’s in her portrayal of the lives of Abel and Blanche that she truly takes history in new directions. Abel was a Jewish boy studying at the University of Paris when he got caught up in the crusade. Blanche, the only survivor of a massacre in the city of Béziers in 1209, ran away from the convent where she had been living in the hopes that the crusade would give her life new meaning. McDonnell gives enough background information to make each of these different perspectives feel fully realized. She creates a unique historical storyline for each of her characters, but is careful to infuse into their interactions a sense of the timeless emotional drama that is part and parcel of being a teen. This gives 1212 the feeling of being both a fine historical recreation and a very contemporary young adult novel.

McDonnell also provides a detailed author’s note to add further context to her story. 1212>/i> joins Karleen Bradford’s Angeline and The Scarlet Cross as an imaginatively powerful recreation of this unforgettable historical moment.