10/03/2026
Jan's reading recommendations:
My Beloved is coming soon in paperback. John Grisham’s The French Illusion will be out soon in hardcover. Signed copies of both are available for pre-order at The Mitford Museum’s Happy Endings Bookstore.
And here’s one more recommendation: Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. Most of you have read it. If you have not, now may be the time to immerse yourself in this great classic.
I was raised in an Old Testament household bent on sticking to the law. I was not a believer. Years later, my daughter Candace gave me a copy of The Great Divorce. Doors opened, windows flew up, oxygen flowed in. C. S. Lewis, a Christian intellectual who espoused a central theme of grace, introduced a Christ who was humorous, unconditionally loving, divine, and real.
When I began writing the Mitford novels in the early nineties, I loosely based my Episcopal priest, Tim Kavanagh, on Lewis. Both balding, upbeat, bookish, and Scots-Irish. How could I not follow the work of a thinker who said, ‘I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.’
As often-quoted as that is, it captures, for me, the kernel of his fresh and prodigious apologetic.
Your devoted author
- Jan
📖 My Beloved: themitfordmuseum.org/product/my-beloved-paperback
📖 The French Illusion: themitfordmuseum.org/product/the-french-illusion-a-novel
📖 Mere Christianity: themitfordmuseum.org/product/mere-christianity
