Now a USA TODAY and Publishers Weekly bestseller! “Patti Callahan seems to have found the story she was born to tell in this tale of unlikely friendship turned true love between Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, that tests the bounds of faith and radically alters both of their lives. Their connection comes to life in Callahan’s expert hands, revealing a connection so persuasive and affecting, we … affecting, we wonder if there’s another like it in history. Luminous and penetrating.” –Paula McLain, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife
In a most improbable friendship, she found love. In a world where women were silenced, she found her voice.
From New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan comes an exquisite novel of Joy Davidman, the woman C. S. Lewis called “my whole world.” When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis–known as Jack–she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn’t holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford don and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters. 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 of one of the greatest love stories of modern times, we meet a brilliant writer, a fiercely independent mother, and a passionate woman who changed the life of this respected author and inspired books that still enchant us and change us. Joy lived at 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.
At once a fascinating historical novel and a glimpse into a writer’s life, Becoming Mrs. Lewis is above all a love story–a love of literature and ideas and a love between a husband and wife that, in the end, was not impossible at all.
“Patti Callahan Henry breathes wondrous fresh life into one of the greatest literary love stories of all time . . . The result is a deeply moving story about love and loss that is transformative and magical.” –Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Orphan’s Tale
“I was swept along, filled with hope, and entirely beguiled, not only by the life lived behind the veil of C. S. Lewis’s books but also by the woman who won his heart. A literary treasure from first page to last.” –Lisa Wingate, New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours
“Profoundly evocative, revealing an intimate view of a woman whose love and story had never been fully told . . . until now . . . Becoming Mrs. Lewis is a tour de force and the must-read of the season!” –Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times bestselling author of Beach House Reunion
“Patti Callahan somehow inhabits Davidman, taking her readers inside the writer’s hungry mind and heart. We keenly feel Davidman’s struggle to become her own person at a time (the 1950s) when women had few options . . . An astonishing work of biographical fiction.” –Lynn Cullen, bestselling author of Mrs. Poe
“Patti Callahan breathes life into this fascinating woman whose hunger for knowledge leads her to buck tradition at every turn.” –Diane Chamberlain, New York Times bestselling author of The Dream Daughter
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This book is fictionalized but based on a true life story. It starts with an exchange of letters with a woman and C.S. Lewis. These letters question faith and show her quest to follow God. Although her life was short, it was one of the most beautiful love stories I have ever read.
Pulled me in, kept me up, left me joyful. Need I say more?
In case you aren’t yet persuaded to snatch up this beautiful book for your reading stack, let me add that Patti Callahan’s writing is at times so breathtaking, as a writer, I paused to reread a turn of phrase. As magical as the writing is, though, the novel’s true magic is the revelation of the man behind the stories we all know and the woman, the outsider, who captured his heart. Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis were an unlikely match, separated by an ocean, an age difference, ghosts of the past, and the general complications of life, and yet love has the power to conquer all. The telling of their story is long overdue.
Read this book. It will remind you that we are, each of us, so much more than the masks we wear.
I’m incredibly delighted this book is finally out in the world! It’s a labor of love. It’s a joy and it’s a seminal moment for a really incredible team of women: Patti Callahan and Joy Davidman. I think you’re going to love it!
I’ve always loved reading C.S.Lewis books and stories. One of the few books I’ve read by him was A Grief Observed. I knew it was about the death of his beloved Joy Gresham. But I was intrigued by their story so when this book came out I immediately purchased it. I was not disappointed. The writing is lyrical, Joy’s journey from atheism to faith is dealt with in a respectful and meaningful way. I was transposed to England and Oxford with her words. Well worth a read.
Thanks to Patti Callahan and her publisher for sending a copy of this lovely book. It’s beautiful, sad, meaningful, and uplifting.
This novel was beautifully written, tender, soul-wrenching, hope-filled and painful. Years ago, I was inspired by the movie Shadowlands about Lewis and Davidman’s relationship. This book added a great deal more depth to the story behind their relationship. I appreciated the way Callahan allowed Joy and Jack to be so very human. Also loved hearing their story from Joy’s point of view. This novel was historical fiction at its best.
With an artist’s touch, Patti has woven flesh and bone onto an unlikely love story and given us a glimpse into a beautiful and storied romance. I read this through an increasing sense of awe and admiration. By the final page, I realized Patti had crafted an intimate and daring literary achievement.
In Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Patti Callahan Henry breathes wondrous fresh life into one of the greatest literary love stories of all time: the unlikely romance between English writer C. S. Lewis and the much younger American divorcee, Joy Davidman. Callahan chronicles their complex and unconventional relationship with a sure voice, deep insight into character, and eye for period detail. The result is a deeply moving story about love and loss that is transformative and magical.
Brilliant!
A fictional take on the story of Joy Davidman and CS Lewis. I had previously seen and adored the film Shadowlands, so I came to the character of Joy Davidman informed by Debra Winger’s strong performance. Winger was actually very good, with not a lot to go on, but Joy Davidman comes fully to life in this novel. Patti Callahan gets inside the head, heart, and psyche of a brilliant, unfulfilled woman poet who has already transitioned in her life from young artist/Communist in the 1930s to unhappy Christian wife married to an alcoholic fellow writer in upstate New York, and mother of two boys.
The literal and emotional journey Joy takes is quite remarkable, since it involves years of increasingly warm and intimate friendship in England with CS Lewis, an Oxford don and author of the Narnia books as well as books on Christianity. But Joy wants much, much more. The tragedy of the story is that just as she gets what she wants, Lewis’s commitment and declaration of love, she is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her ultimate fate is to be erased, albeit in a loving way. His protective shadow blurred her brilliance. Callahan sees some of the irony here, I believe, but also traces a beautiful and shatteringly real love story that changed both of these figures irrevocably. She restores something to Joy Davidman that has been lost to time. The novel was published by a Christian press, but Joy’s edges and struggles have not been softened. The snippets of her love sonnets that start the chapters (which, amazingly, were only rediscovered a few years ago!) are harrowing and beautiful. Callahan almost takes on the role of a literary daughter here, illuminating Joy Davidman Lewis as only a daughter could.
(I received an ARC from the publisher, Thomas Nelson, in return for an honest review.)
Becoming Mrs. Lewis illuminates the raw humanity of seeking faith in a distrustful world. We’ve heard C. S. Lewis’s narrative. Here, Callahan keenly demystifies poet Joy Davidman’s story and in the telling, shows us the power of a greater love. I was wonderstruck by this novel.
In Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Callahan peels back the curtain and allows a glimpse into Joy Davidman’s extraordinary life and her love and marriage with C. S. Lewis. With captivating prose, Callahan carries the reader across the ocean from New York to Oxford and into the private heart of this tender love story.
I thought I knew Joy Davidman, the oft mentioned but little examined wife of C. S. Lewis, but in Becoming Mrs. Lewis, Patti Callahan breathes life into this fascinating woman whose hunger for knowledge leads her to buck tradition at every turn. In a beautifully crafted account, Patti unveils Joy as a passionate and courageous — yet very human — seeker of answers to the meaning of life and the depths of faith. Becoming Mrs. Lewis is an unlikely love story that will touch heart, mind, and soul.
Becoming Mrs. Lewis is at once profoundly evocative, revealing an intimate view of a woman whose love and story had never been fully told… until now. Patti Callahan brings to life the elusive Joy Davidman and illuminates the achingly touching romance between Joy and C . S. Lewis. This is the book Patti Callahan was born to write. Becoming Mrs. Lewis is a tour de force and the must-read of the season!
Patti Callahan seems to have found the story she was born to tell in this tale of unlikely friendship turned true love between Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis, that tests the bounds of faith and radically alters both of their lives. Their connection comes to life in Callahan’s expert hands, revealing a connection so persuasive and affecting, we wonder if there’s another like it in history. Luminous and penetrating.
This well-written story is full of letters between the main characters.
This book was quite simply brilliant. If you love C.S. Lewis or even if you don’t, you will love this beautifully insightful portrait of his late-in-life wife and fascinating woman in her own right, Joy Lewis.
I love the backstory on this: when a friend asked Patti Henry what she would write about if she could write about anything: the answer came at once: Joy Davidman. Years later, this book is the result of that conversation. In her new biographical novel, Henry tells how American poet and mother Joy Davidman became the wife of C.S. Lewis. While I *thought* I was familiar with the story, I learned something new on every page, and polished this off in an enjoyable two days.
What a lovely tribute to both Joy and Jack …
Wow. This book was everything I was expecting it to be and more. Full of profound emotional and spiritual depth with beautifully written prose I cannot recommend this more.