Facing heartbreak and poverty, discovering friendship and faith, against all the odds, the couple struggle to secure a love that will endure forever.

This book brings a vivid portrayal of “a woman diverse, courageous, and complicated, and a woman whom C. 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. During this time in history (1950s), Joy’s independence and decisions regarding her marriage and children were most likely questioned.This book of fiction imagines that world where Joy and Lewis correspond, meet and eventually marry after many years and as the story continues we see the tragedies of their lives unfold. She dives into “history and philosophy books, with religious texts and pamphlets,” it changes her religious view or rather non-religious. The impact of their love still resonates, through Lewis’s “A Grief Observed” written after losing his wife to cancer soon after marriage .

Another was a time when he felt like he knew exactly what his mother wanted and brought it to her just as she needed it — a simple fly swatter. She’s selfish, promiscuous, and even childish in her thoughts and conversations regarding her parents.

Their Eros-story led to some of Lewis's greatest works, yet Joy is most commonly known for how she died. This inspired me, after I graduated as a teacher, to work abroad for nine years, teaching English as a foreign language, developing an understanding of English grammar along the way.

A full-time author, mother of three, and grandmother of two, she lives in Mountain Brook, Alabama with her husband, Pat Henry. Not even sure what started it, but this time, select passages of this book combined with historical knowledge of Jack and Joy and random quotes for Lewis's works touched me in a very different way - a personal way - and I learned so much through later study combined with just the thoughts on this book! Her surname is a reference to Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

The author in the note is far too caring about these women muses being recognized behind the "great" men of literary history that I see a lot of Joy's characterization in the author's own character in her note. Joy's first foray to England because of health problems, was her entrance into the world of Lewis and his alcoholic brother. The two begin writing back and forth, exploring and deeply connecting through their words to each other and over their spiritual beliefs. There are so many small details that create a stunning setting both of beauty especially during Joy’s first trip to Oxford and heartache back in her unhealthy marriage and strangling New York home. As magical as the writing is, though, the novel's true magic is the revelation of the man behind the stories we all know and the woman, the outsider, who captured his heart.