Joy davidman biography book

Writer Abigail Santamaria’s biography of Joy Davidman, Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C. S. Lewis, takes us beyond Joy’s relationship to C. S. Lewis. She examines the whole of Joy’s life, which “embraced more milestones and worldviews than most people experience in a lifetime twice as long.” Davidman embraced atheism, communism, scientology, and, finally, Christianity before she ended up in the arms of Lewis.

Joy, born in 1915 to Jewish immigrants in New York City, defined her life goal early on—she wanted to be a writer.

She majored in English, pledging: “I devote a single heart to literature.” Santamaria distributes samples of her poetry throughout the book. They reveal a woman of deep thoughts and dreams, one “absorbed in matters of the heart.” They reveal an aesthetic passionate about beauty—about finding it, delighting in it, and deploying it as a tool to heal what had been broken.

She had “a sonnet for every wound.”

And wounds were plentiful: exclusion