Mrs. Joy Davidman Gresham

Joy Gresham is an American woman in her late thirties, the mother of one son, Douglas. Born Jewish, Joy later became a communist, then a Christian. She also was a poet who once won a national prize that she shared with Robert Frost. Gresham is having problems with her marriage to a fellow writer in the United States. By the beginning of the play, her correspondence with Lewis has become the most important thing in her life. On a trip to England with her son, she meets Lewis and finds that even in person they have an intellectual kinship that grows into a strong friendship. After meeting him in a hotel for tea, then accepting his invitation to come to tea at his house and staying there for Christmas as well, Gresham divorces her husband and moves to Oxford. Joy soon discovers that she has...