In this episode, I talk to New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan about her latest novel “Becoming Mrs. Lewis.” The book is historical fiction, a slight departure from Patti’s other work in that it imagines two beloved writers in the 1940s and 50s. “Becoming Mrs. Lewis” explores the improbable love affair between C. S. Lewis and Joy Davidman from Joy’s first-person point of view.
About the Book
Becoming Mrs. Lewis
By Patti Callahan
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. Visit Becoming Mrs. Lewis Page and Buy Links.
About the Author
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. Visit Author Website
Books Mentioned in this Podcast
Oct, 2, 2018
Episode 48: