Joy Davidman
Joy Gresham (November 1945-1960) New York divorcée and mother of Douglas Gresham, she moved to England in 1953 where she met and married her second husband, author C.S. Lewis, having been inspired by his books on Christianity. (Her first husband William drank heavily and eventually left her for another woman.) A former card carrying communist and atheistic Jew, it was largely through Lewis' writings that Gresham examined and subsequently converted to the Christian faith. His intellectual equal, she captivated Lewis who first married her out of convenience so that she could obtain her British citizenship. When she fell ill with cancer, he realized how much he loved her and proposed to marry her properly, "before God." She recovered briefly, but she eventually succumbed to the cancer. It claimed her life in 1960 at the age of forty-five; Lewis died one week shy of his sixty-fifth birthday three years later on November 22, 1963, the same day American president John F. Kennedy was assassinated (as did British novelist Aldous Huxley).
Shadowlands, a romanticized version of her life with Lewis starring Anthony Hopkins as Jack (Lewis) and Debra Winger as Joy, was released on DVD in 1998.
See also: Douglas Gresham