The Road to Jerusalem

Born to a noble Swedish family in 1150, young Arn Magnusson is given to a Cistercian monastery after surviving a fall his family reads as a miracle. There, under a learned monk and a former Knight Templar, he is schooled in history, languages, and the arts of war. When Arn finally leaves the cloister, he enters a Sweden torn by feuds between rival clans and shaken by the murder of a king. A love affair and a false accusation of sin cost him everything, and he is sentenced to years of penance as a Templar in the Holy Land. This first book of the Crusades trilogy follows Arn from childhood to the threshold of his road to Jerusalem.