The Gift

From a mud hut in Tanzania to Gala movie premiers with royalty. Non-verbal and deeply dyslexic, dumped underage into a boarding school in Tasmania, lost and alone to becoming the senior matriarch of an extended high achieving family, this is the remarkable story of Meredith ("Merrie") Gresham.

Overshadowed by her talented and sought-after husband (C.S. Lewis' stepson Douglas Gresham), and constantly challenged by her circumstances yet in the end, wonderfully fulfilled. Merrie's life runs from a girl's darkest nightmares to a woman's greatest joys, and provides a unique insight into the generational continuation of the C.S. Lewis legacy.

From heavily disgusted with religion to running a well-known Christian psychotherapy mission and enthusiastic evangelist. From insecurity and fear to strength and courage, here is the life-long journey of physical, emotional and spiritual hardship that gradually turned to triumph, gratitude and fulfilment.

Meredith "Merrie" Gresham was born in colonial East Africa toward the end of WWII before moving, at the age of five, to a small farm in pioneering Tasmania.She trained as a nurse at Calvary Hospital in Hobart and then travelled to London where she nursed at St. Thomas' Hospital on the banks of the River Thames. Merrie caught the eye of a young agricultural student, Douglas Gresham, the step-son of the then little-known Oxford academic and Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. The two were married and re-emigrated to Tasmania where they once again took up farming. But as interest in the life and writings of Lewis increased over the years, Douglas and the family were caught up in a whirlwind of international travel, speaking tours, book signings, movie scripts and premieres. The couple have five children and eleven grandchildren. They now reside on Malta.