Maureen Wolff's novel, The Pearl of Heart First Alliance, takes Unicorns to a whole new level, literally. She defines in her story what a Unicorn is, and what it takes for a Unicorn to become white. In Maureen's world of Unicorns, they don't start out white, for in the same manner that a Military Officer earns his/her stripes, a Unicorn earns his "white." Only the purest of heart Unicorns can qualify for this level. Each Unicorn passes through sixteen levels of Magic Training, and IF they reach their sixteenth level, they are then in waiting for the highest status: The Pearl of Heart. Unicorns are often sought or found in their Whiteness, and occasional Blackness, but not many stories about them, no matter how great the stories were, tell about the Unicorn's life before that point, or how he/she got to that point. Maureen shatters the unofficial "rule book" on what defines a Unicorn, and shows what it takes to be one of these High Fantasy creatures, in a world of darkness. General "guidelines" had to be followed, for Maureen is not the first to write of Unicorns. There are certain aspects of Unicorns that she could not ignore: the love of Maidens, the magic, the image, and the purity, and so on. Some of these defining aspects were "tweaked" to fit her novel, but nonetheless remained truthful to what a Unicorn IS. Other aspects of this story remain secret, as Maureen is working on a trilogy for this story, and further information as to why she wrote the way she did will be revealed in her second and third additions to this Novel.