"Sheldon 'Van' Vanauken and Jean 'Davy' Vanauken were lucky enough to discover that radiant love so often written of in books, so seldom found in real life. Van and Davy got married, crossed oceans and became inextricably bound up in a search for Christian faith. At Oxford they met C. S. Lewis and through his influence became believers. But then Davy fell prey to a mysterious illness. What follows is an almost unbearably powerful story of hope and sorrow. Van turned to Lewis, his friend and mentor, for guidance. Their letters, published here for the first time, ask the difficult questions, and show the saving grace of a tragedy courageously borne." From the back cover of A Severe Mercy
In one of his letters to me Van wrote the following about a comparison between A Severe Mercy (ASM) and his novel Gateway to Heaven (GTH):
"Why does ASM read more like a modern novel than GTH? I don't think it does, either more or less. Both are set in modern times, both involve sailing craft. . . . Of course the reader of ASM knows from the first of the great love and the death because I tell him so, having chosen for good reasons to make the whole book a flashback. But the story begins with chapter II: 'We met angrily in the dead of winter. . . .' ASM is like a symphony: it begins with an overture that states all the themes. (Even the old wooden bridge becomes for a moment the deck of a schooner.)
"You persuade me to tell you why the "overture" in ASM. In planning the book I didn't want it to be an autobiography ("I was born . . ."); it was to be the story of us. "We met angrily . . ." was the true beginning. But I wanted to set the stage in advance, especially Glenmerle where so much of our love developed. I didn't want to be writing about our going together to Glenmerle and then having to take a couple of pages to describe Glenmerle. Moreover, there were a few things in my early life that played a role in the development of our love, e.g., what my room looked like, my 3-part boyhood code & several other things. How to do it? Then one morning before my eyes were open (literally) I saw how to do it: the walk into Glenmerle, with all its memories of the past. But if I began with that, setting the stage, remembering boyhood, I would have to tell of her death and being in the wind. I didn't particularly want to tell there of her death and other hints of the future, but I saw no reason not to . . . and the 'overture' idea developed. The point I wish to stress is, I wanted to describe Glenmerle (and a few bits of boyhood memories) before we went there together. The tip-off to her death and to the great love was not the reason for the chapter: I merely saw no reason to conceal them. So its sounding like a modern novel was, so to speak, an accident."
