To be born Egyptian is immense fortune. Hatshepsut, a thirteen-year-old Egyptian princess, doesn't feet that she is entirely fortunate. After all, she is a girl. She grumbles about taking lessons with her brothers. Why should she study reading and writing, literature, history, and mathematics? As a princess, she will never need to be skilled at these things.

But Hatshepsut little knows what life has in store for her. She will need to know all these things and more. By the time she is fourteen years old, she will be a wife, and shortly thereafter, a queen. The early death of her husband makes Hatshepsut Queen-Regent, ruling jointly with her husband's son -- a son who is only a child, and the child of a concubine at that. Hatshepsut thrives as Queen-Regent, creating opportunities to act for the good of her people and the glory of Egypt. Yet she chafes at sharing her reign with a child. Seizing the supreme opportunity, Hatshepsut names herself Pharaoh, setting aside the young heir to the throne. She rules as King of Upper and Lower Egypt for more than twenty years.

Dorothy Sharp Carter's fictional account is based on the real life of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut. It is a fascinating story of a determined woman who defied extraordinary odds and ruled her people well,