title: The Children's Crusade: A Novel
author:  Ann Packer 
description: Ann Packer is the acclaimed author of two collections of short fiction, <i>Swim Back to Me</i> and <i>Mendocino and Other Stories</i>, and two bestselling novels, <i>Songs Without Words</i> and <i>The Dive from Clausens Pier</i>, which received the Kate Chopin Literary Award, among many other prizes and honors. Her short fiction has appeared in <i>The New Yorker</i> and in the O. Henry Prize Stories anthologies, and her novels have been published around the world. She lives in San Carlos, California.
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  This
  is
  a
  luminous and
  spellbinding
  novel,
  a
  thrilling
  odyssey
  that
  ends
  in
  heart-stopping
  climax within the walls of Jerusalem. An Army
  of
  Children
  is
  about
  faith,
  about
  innocence,
  about the irrepressibility of youth.
  It is the story
  of two teen-age boys, Roger and Jonathan, one
  Christian,
  the other Jewish, and of
  their quest
  for emotional and spiritual identity as they par-
  ticipate
  in one of the most extraordinary mass
  youth movements the world has ever witnessed
  —the Children's Crusade of the thirteenth cen-
  tury.
  Like the youth of our own day, these children
  sought to bring peace to
  all mankind; they be-
  lieved that only through love could the world be
  redeemed. Some of the marchers were as young
  as six or eight; the leader himself was only ten.
  In tracing the epic journey of the young cru-
  saders, Evan
  H.
  Rhodes
  walked
  nearl