THE REAL MRS. MINIVER: Jan Struther's Story

Nothing better sums up Joyce Maxtone Graham than the image of her sitting naked on Abraham Lincoln's bed in the White House in 1943, writing letters, first to her lover, a Jewish refugee in New York, and then to her husband, a British soldier in a POW camp in Italy. Ysenda Graham—Joyce's granddaughter—pulls together countless small moments, crafting a rich and absorbing portrait of the woman who (under the pen name Jan Struther) created the beloved fictional British housewife, Mrs. Miniver. On the surface the two women appeared so similar—with three children, an ideal husband, a delightful life in London, and weekends and summers in the country—that even Joyce's friends and relatives confused them. But far from being a happy housewife, Joyce felt trapped in her marriage and so constrained by the duties of motherhood that she hired "relief nannies" to work on the nanny's day off. Late in life her mood swings became so severe she spent time in a psychiatric hospital. As depicted by Graham, Joyce was a bundle of contradictions: a nonbeliever who wrote beloved Christian hymns, a talented writer who squandered opportunities to write screenplays, a television show and her autobiography, and a woman whose moral compass, though strongly tuned to social wrongs, sometimes failed to guide her in her own life. Graham, born nine years after her grandmother's death at age 52 (in 1952), has done a tremendous job of blending excerpts from Joyce's poetry and prose with scenes from a life that was endlessly fascinating, if not always happy. B&w photos. (Nov.)