Becoming Mrs. Lewis

October 18, 2018

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.

My Review

While, this book is a fiction, it felt very believable. I do not know much about C.S. Lewis's personal life. Therefore, to be it felt like he and Joy were destined to be together. Joy was more reserved then C.S. aka Jack. He went by Jack back than. Jack was more outgoing. Yet, as the saying goes "opposites attract". Which did they ever. Jack and Joy shared a true love connection within the letters that they corresponded with one another. Their love only grew as they hung out in each other's company. The more and more I read, the more I fell in love with their story.

Example: When Jack proposes to Joy, she says "This might not be the most romantic proposal". He replies "It's not meant to be romantic. It's meant to be sincere."

Remember Helen Joy Davidman
D. July 1960
Loved wife of C.S. Lewis
Here the whole world (stars, water, air
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes yet with hope that she
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.

Listen to an audio clip here.

Purchase Links

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

About Patti Callahan

Patti Callahan (who also writes as Patti Callahan Henry) is a New York Times bestselling author. Patti was a finalist in the Townsend Prize for Fiction, has been an Indie Next Pick, twice an OKRA pick, and a multiple nominee for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Novel of the Year. Her work has also been included in short story collections, anthologies, magazines and blogs. Patti attended Auburn University for her undergraduate work, and Georgia State University for her graduate degree. Once a Pediatric Clinical Nurse Specialist, she now writes full time. The mother of three children, she lives in both Mountain Brook, Alabama and Bluffton, South Carolina with her husband.