Wade Center
BECOMING MRS. LEWIS fictionalizes Joy Davidman's friendship with C.S. Lewis and her journey from New York to Oxford where she found not only love but also her own voice.
Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times bestselling author of 12 novels, including THE BOOKSHOP AT WATER'S END. She has been a finalist in the Townsend Prize for Fiction and a multiple nominee for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Novel of the Year. She began her research for her latest historical novel, BECOMING MRS. LEWIS, at the Wade Center.
This event took place at the Wade Center on December 6, 2018.
Wade call number: CSL-Y / VR-122
About Becoming Mrs. Lewis
Now a USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly, and The Globe and Mail 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 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.
Read More about Patti's & Joy's Journey: Buy the Book, View extensive Videos, Podcasts, Letters, Additional Reading, Interviews, Timelines, Praise, Book Club Kit, discussion questions, plus more.
About the Author
Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times best-selling author of fourteen novels, including the (Historical Fiction), BECOMING MRS. LEWIS—The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. Now a USA TODAY, Publishers Weekly, and The Globe and Mail bestseller. (writing as Patti Callahan)
Her fifteenth novel, THE FAVORITE DAUGHTER, (Southern Contemporary Fiction) was released June 4, 2019, and is available now. A full-time author and mother of three children, she now resides in both Mountain Brook, Alabama and Bluffton, South Carolina with her husband. Read More
About The Marion E. Wade Center
A living literary center of scholarly, artistic, and ongoing spiritual renewal
The Marion E. Wade Center promotes cultural engagement and spiritual formation by offering a collection of resources available nowhere else in the world. We emphasize the ongoing relevance of seven British Christian authors who provide a distinctive blend of intellect, imagination, and faith: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Dorothy L. Sayers, George MacDonald, G.K. Chesterton, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. The Wade Center implements these goals by:
Assisting scholars in their study of unique materials by and about these seven authors in order to generate new understandings;
Sharing insights with a broader audience through our numerous programs and publications;
Supporting artistic works inspired by our authors;
Welcoming visitors to our museum.