The first full biography of Joy Davidman brings her out from C. S. Lewis’s shadow to reveal a powerful writer and thinker.

Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. Their marriage was immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis’s memoir, A Grief Observed. Now, through extraordinary new documents as well as years of research and interviews, Abigail Santamaria brings Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis to the page in the fullness and depth she deserves. A poet and radical, Davidman was a frequent contributor to the communist vehicle New Masses and an active member of New York literary circles in the 1930s and 40s. After growing up Jewish in the Bronx, she was an atheist, then a practitioner of Dianetics; she converted to Christianity after experiencing a moment of transcendent grace. A mother, a novelist, a vibrant and difficult and intelligent woman, she set off for England in 1952, determined to captivate the man whose work had changed her life. Davidman became the intellectual and spiritual partner Lewis never expected but cherished. She helped him refine his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, and to write his novel Till We Have Faces. Their relationship—begun when Joy wrote to Lewis as a religious guide—grew from a dialogue about faith, writing, and poetry into a deep friendship and a timeless love story.

"Abigail Santamaria’s Joy is . . . a relentlessly focused and detailed biography of Joy Davidman . . . a serious and substantial work [that] takes the reader far beyond the familiar romance of the film and play Shadowlands, and the brilliance of Lewis’s meditation on Davidman’s death, A Grief Observed . . . This groundbreaking study contributes not just to established Lewis studies, but brings to the foreground the cost of being a talented woman in a patriarchal world. It makes its case for the possibility of Christian faith in a compromised world with elegance and skill." - Church Times

"Joy Davidman is best known as the wife of C. S. Lewis and many people are familiar with the depiction of their marriage in the book (and then film) Shadowlands, but we now have this 300 plus page biography that finally does her justice. What impressed this reviewer was Joy’s raw humanity that was redeemed by God. It is plain (and she acknowledged it) that her conversion was utterly of grace. Her unique personality and talents were precious to God and used by God in His service. Every page of this biography shows the value of the original papers, interviews and oral histories that went into its composition. On reading this book, fans of C. S. Lewis, if they are not already, will become fans of Joy Davidman as well." - New Life Christian Magazine