Becoming Mrs. Lewis: The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis

Patti Callahan Henry, who also writes as Patti Callahan, gives voice to unexplored terrain in the past in her historical fiction. Published in 2018, Becoming Mrs. Lewis chronicles how Joy Davidman’s first marriage crumbles as her faith in the Christian God builds through the burgeoning friendship and love between her and C. S. Lewis. Deeply researched, Becoming Mrs. Lewis includes biographical and textual details from the intellectual milieu of the Inklings, a group of Oxford professors that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Focusing on the intersections between marriage and Davidman’s authorial identity, Callahan creates a historical fiction that uses imagined correspondence and the writings of Lewis and Davidman to fill in the gaps in the facts of their relationship. With an undergraduate degree from Auburn University and a master’s degree from Georgia State, Callahan Henry, who worked as a pediatric nurse specialist, infuses Becoming Mrs. Lewis with accurate depictions of Davidman’s illnesses and the symptoms of and treatments for a cancer that proves fatal. The author of 17 books and the winner of the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for Becoming Mrs. Lewis, as well as numerous other awards, Callahan Henry later published Once Upon a Wardrobe in 2021, which maps out C. S. Lewis’s childhood and early life.

This guide refers to the 2020 expanded edition of Becoming Mrs. Lewis, published by Thomas Nelson.

Content Warning: Becoming Mrs. Lewis includes depictions of alcohol addiction and gender-based violence, along with mentions of antisemitism.

Plot Summary

Consisting of four parts, Becoming Mrs. Lewis focuses on Joy Davidman, a Jewish American writer, and her troubling and often abusive marriage to fellow author William Lindsey Gresham, known as Bill throughout the novel. Gresham, famous for Nightmare Alley, which was made into a movie in 1947 and 2021, experiences symptoms of alcohol addiction throughout his marriage to Joy, which the novel explores. As she considers her conversion to Christianity, Joy confronts her husband’s infidelity, their ongoing financial problems, and her unhappiness with her domestic existence. Linking these struggles to her childhood, Joy recalls her history as the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants. Growing up in New York City, Joy remembers escaping to the Bronx Zoo at night with her brother Howie to visit the lions, whom she had the courage to touch. Foreshadowing the effect of Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia on her life, these moments in the zoo offer a brief respite from her demanding and boorish father and her hyper-critical mother. As Chapter 1 opens, Joy returns to a familiar scene with Bill talking to her after he had relapsed again. Her frustration and pain reach a crescendo as the line goes dead, and she collapses in prayer in her son’s nursery. She finds faith in the Christian God in this moment, moving away from her atheism as she searches for answers to her questions and doubts.

Bill joins her in her search for answers in Christianity, helped by their reading of C. S. Lewis’s apologetics and memoirs of his own faith, including The Great Divorce. Moving to upstate New York, Joy and Bill continue to write and work on their marriage, both with varying success. As Joy begins a correspondence with Lewis, her life takes a drastic turn. No longer willing to play Bill’s devoted wife and experiencing symptoms of chronic health conditions, Joy tries to write more. After a vacation in Vermont with Chad Walsh, a scholar focused on C. S. Lewis, Joy experiences a swift decline in her health. Joined in New York by her cousin Renee and her children, Joy fantasizes about a trip to see Jack (Lewis’s nickname) in England, which she undertakes at the end of Part 1, hoping to save her life.

One of the two longest parts of the novel, Part 2 opens in England, where Joy visits and stays with her friend Phyl in London. Ever short of funds, Joy writes letters to Bill and Renee, who have stayed behind with her children in New York. As Part 2 unfolds, her emotional estrangement from her husband grows to match her physical distance. Writing for survival and money, Joy continues to write to Bill as his letters grow despondent and the news from upstate New York turns grim. Joy soon travels to Oxford, where she often visits Jack and his brother, coming face to face with the masculine world of English academia. Trying to navigate this world, Joy continues to see her friend Michal, the widow of George Williams, one of the Inklings.

Bad news arrives in a letter from Bill, who announces his love for Renee, pronouncing that she embodies the wife and mother he wants Joy to be. Shattered by this news, Joy finds solace first at Westminster Abbey and then at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Despite her pain over her failed marriage and her distance from her sons, Joy finds peace and serenity in England. Helping Jack edit his Oxford History of English Literature, Joy lends her support to him as he catalogs the various frustrations he encounters at Oxford, having been denied advancement because of his popular fiction. Having found her intellectual match, Joy completes Smoke on the Mountain, her book focusing on the Ten Commandments, and Jack offers to write the preface for the English edition.

The shortest of the four parts of the novel, Part 3 sees Joy return to America, having learned of Bill’s affair with Renee. Joy remains the target of Bill’s cruelty and the scapegoat for his failures as a writer, husband, and father. Soon after her arrival, they argue, and Bill physically attacks his wife while Renee cries, begging them both to stop. Rushing upstairs, Joy expels Renee from the bedroom she and Renee share, throwing her cousin’s belonging out in the hallway. While Joy recognizes that her marriage can’t be saved, she spends much of Part 3 attempting to live safely in the New York farmhouse, lacking the money to divorce Bill. Facing Renee’s entreaties to allow them to start a life together, Joy acknowledges that she and Bill have no future together. Wondering why Renee thinks Bill won’t be cruel to her, Joy tries to show her cousin that Bill has been a terrible husband and man to her. Escaping to New York City to visit her college roommate Belle and attend a reunion of the MacDowell Writing Retreat, Joy confesses her unhappiness to Belle. Having met Bill at the writing retreat, she now plans for their divorce as she gathers again with that group.

Time passes as the anxiety and tension build in the farmhouse, and Renee announces that she has decided to move to Miami, unable to live peacefully with the estranged couple. After she leaves, Bill soon considers reconciling with Joy and proposes that they try again. Adamant about a divorce, Joy flatly refuses. Renee writes her cousin, shattered by Bill’s capricious desires, and Joy expresses sympathy for her cousin, asking only that Renee confirm the affair in legal paperwork. From this moment, Joy’s marriage dissolves quickly, and she moves to New Rochelle to await her voyage to England with her sons.

Part 4 finds Joy and her sons living in England. Money continues to worry her as she tries to project a strong image for Douglas and Davy. Finding rooms to rent, she knows she will soon become destitute without a job or income. Her landlord offers her a better, cheaper arrangement, and Joy makes plans to visit Oxford. Bringing her sons to the Kilns proves a refreshing and restorative event—so unlike and different from their old home in upstate New York. Likened to Narnia again and again in Part 4, the Kilns becomes the refuge for this blended family. After a long publishing drought, Joy finds success not only with Warnie, Jack’s brother, but also on her own, receiving a contract to write on the seven deadly sins. As Jack decides to leave Oxford for Cambridge, Joy’s parents arrive, worried about her financial status. Insulting to Jack, Joy’s father embarrasses her, and her mother exasperates her, as she cares more for shopping than museums and sightseeing. They leave her with gifts, money, and an uneasy peace.

Having learned the British Foreign Office has turned down her work visa, Jack helps her buy a house in Oxford and marries her in a civil ceremony, hoping to keep his close friend near him. While grateful to stay in England, Joy wants more. Content to remain married privately, Jack eventually relents, inviting her to move into the Kilns. Before she can move in, she collapses, and doctors find malignant and spreading cancer throughout her body. Her prognosis remains negative. Having fallen in love, she and Jack decide to marry in the Church, defying the Bishop, who turns down their request for an exception. After Jack’s priest friend marries them, Jack and Joy live together at the Kilns, where the doctors release her to die. Miraculously, her cancer stops growing, and her bone starts to heal. Jack and Joy are happily married for three years, traveling to Ireland and Greece while she is in remission. She dies in 1960, which Joy narrates in the Epilogue, before describing her sons’ futures and Jack’s death in 1963.