Shadowlands focuses on renowned English author and scholar C. S. Lewis, known by his friends as Jack. It is 1952, and Jack is living an orderly, sheltered life as an Oxford don and sharing a house with his brother Warnie. Into this life walks Joy Davidman Gresham, a brash American poet who has been corresponding with Jack. Her honesty immediately captures Jack’s fancy, and the two strike up a close friendship. When Joy and her son relocate to London after Joy’s divorce, that friendship becomes a marriage of convenience, which in turn becomes a chance for Jack to experience a love which his fears had always denied him.