Memorial Day and Book Club Selection - Becoming Mrs C.S Lewis

I call myself a wanta-be writer therefore I need to crank out a blog post whether I'm in the mood to do so or not. That's what writers do…no excuses, bang the keyboard until it squeals in protest. It's Memorial Day weekend but over the years I've written over twenty posts with that theme so I'm pretty sure I've covered not only the history of the holiday itself but all the years I've decorated graves of ancestries I didn't know, the years of going to lake parties with my husband's family, the two-day mini vacations my husband and I took along Lake Michigan and, of course, the first few years I was a newly minted widow back then I was one. In more recent years I've attended the memorial services put on by the residents here on my continuum care campus. I didn't go this year because 1) I have a doctor' appointment at the same time and 2) I was glad I had a conflict so my heart and head didn't have to battle it out over going, or not. I'm not proud of my country right now and singing patriotic songs would seem hollow and insincere. 

We have a lot of veterans living here and I've heard their stories----some poignant including a widow's whose husband was a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War and some stories almost apologetic because the veteran didn't see any action. The POW was in the same brutal prison camp as John McCain and another woman living here actually wore a POW bracelet with McCain's name on it. He wasn't famous back then but it's still an amazing story to tell. Even more amazing because she's a MAGA Republican and I've thought about asking her what she thought about 45/47 besmirching McCain's military record by claiming he was only a war hero because he got captured. "I like people who weren't captured," he said. To refresh our collective memories McCain was flying a bomber that got shot down and he was ejected from the plane, landed in a lake where the locals where waiting to take him prisoner. How would President Bone Spurs have escaped from that scenario, I wonder?

This past week I've become a recluse, avoiding all contact with my neighbors. Not for any particular reason other than I was involved in a couple of activities that were relaxing and satisfying. I was working on a custom paint-by-number of my great-great-nephew while listening to a book on my Kindle. It's a book club selection titled Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Cathahan. It's a methodically researched, historical fiction about a friendship that turned into a love affair between C.S. Lewis (best known in America for his Chronicles of Narnia series for children) and poet Joy Davidson. I've never read anything by either author but I'm always curious about books that presume to explain a writer's methods, where their ideas came from and their work ethics. In this case there is plenty of documentation that Patti was able to access and after reading the Author's Notes in the back of the book I'm awed by the research that when in to this novel. Though in reading the reviews I learned that opinions of the book swing wide in book club circles. Our discussion comes next Monday.

If you've ever read the Narnia Chronicles to your kids I'm sure you would like this book on a deeper level than I did. Even so, it held my interest. Fans of his books and her poems will love the frequent quotes that Patti uses in their dialogues and the descriptions of the actual locations that inspired Lewis. Christians will also enjoy some of their discussions---she was an atheist at the beginning of the book and Lewis was well known for his apologetic religious writing. I didn't know what an "apologetic religious writer" was and in case you don't either here is how google explains it: "It involves providing arguments, both positive and negative, to support a specific religious faith and respond to objections or criticisms. Apologetic writing aims to make a case for the truth and value of a particular religious system, often using logical reasoning, historical evidence, and philosophical arguments." Lewis and Davidson were pen-pals for several years before meeting in person and they debated topics too deep for me to care about. But Patti Callkahan is a skilled writer who had a good sense of how much religion she sprinkled in the pages. I finished the book neither converted nor offended. Silly me, at first I thought maybe the universe was putting this book in my path to convert me before I get too old to know the difference between milk and orange juice. 

After finishing the book I tried reading quotes from The Chronicles of Narnia looking for some that might seem familiar, things that might have seeped into every day life the way lines from Lewis Carroll's children book Alice in Wonderland or Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz have. Do people of a certain age go around quoting lines from Narnia, I wondered, like I've done all my life with lines from Oz? If there is, I couldn’t find them.

Lions, and tigers and bears, oh my!

Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

There's no place like home.

And there is no better place to spend Memorial Day like the cottage where I spent the first 18 summers of my life. And that's where I'm going today after I finish this post. We'll grill hot dogs, eat potato salad and apple pie followed by the Opening Volley of Summer---putting the dock in the lake. How was your Memorial Day weekend? ©