From New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan comes Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, the exquisite novel of Joy Davidman, a 1940-50s writer and poet and the only woman C. S. Lewis ever married. In the vein of popular exploratory novels that uplift and uncover brilliant women forgotten to the past, comes the untold story of the woman who helped inspire some of Lewis’ best known works.
“Joy Davidman has been portrayed as the dying woman in Shadowlands,” explains Callahan, “but in researching Joy, I came to believe that she’d like to be understood as more than a woman who died well on a movie screen. She was a fiery woman who lived bravely and was alert and curious to the mysterious world she wanted to understand.”
When Joy began writing letters to C. S. Lewis—known to close friends and family as “Jack”—she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage to her abusive, alcoholic husband William Lindsay Gresham, a well-regarded author during the era.
“There were conflicting narratives about her and I wanted to know this woman,” adds Callahan. “I wanted to understand her and how she changed not only her life but also the life and work of one of our most beloved authors of the twentieth century—C.S. Lewis.”
Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, and against all odds, finding a love that even the threat of death couldn’t destroy.
In this masterful exploration, we meet a fiercely independent mother and a passionate woman who lived during a time when women weren’t meant to have a voice—and yet her love for Jack gave them both voices they didn’t know they had.
“Joy matters today because we are just now seeing these fascinating women dredged from the mud of the past. Joy is rarely given credit for the muse, best friend, co-author, love and wife she was to C. S. Lewis, and I hope this book helps to right that. Let’s meet the woman beside the man.”