Fonseca

A Novel

By: Jessica Francis Kane

The story acclaimed English author Penelope Fitzgerald never wrote, of her real-life journey to Mexico with her son in search of a much-needed inheritance, by Jessica Francis Kane, bestselling author of Rules for Visiting

Winter 1952. Penelope Fitzgerald’s husband is a struggling alcoholic, their literary journal is on the brink, and she is pregnant with their third child. Out of the blue she receives a letter from two spinster sisters named Delaney, distant relations with a silver mine, who dangle the possibility of an inheritance.

Jessica Francis Kane’s brilliantly imagined Fonseca fictionalizes Penelope’s real and momentous trip to northern Mexico in pursuit of this legacy, a creative and practical lifeline. She leaves her two-year-old, Tina, with relatives and sails for New York with her six-year-old, Valpy, in tow. From there, mother and son take a bus all the way to . . . Fonseca.

But when they arrive, nothing goes to plan. There are others vying for the Delaney money, and for three months, from Day of the Dead to Candlemas, Penelope must navigate a quixotic household and guide her impressionable son. More and more people arrive: an ambitious American couple, various local entrepreneurs and artists (including Edward Hopper and his wife, Jo), and finally a handsome stranger who claims he is a Delaney.

With heart, humor, and a deep understanding of her subject that has characterized the range of her work her whole career, Kane (whose work “could have been written by Jane Austen’s great great-great-granddaughter”—Oprah Daily) has written much more than an homage: Fonseca is an enthralling world of its own as well as a stunning fictionalization of a season in Fitzgerald’s life.

©2025 Jessica Francis Kane (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Jessica Francis Kane has done something marvelous—bringing us Penelope Fitzgerald as a character in a novel she meant to write but never wrote—and maybe never could write, for how it was about herself in some extraordinary straits. Hauntingly witty, funny, pitch-perfect, Penelope Fitzgerald comes alive again in Fonseca. I was riveted, start to finish.”—Alexander Chee, bestselling author of How to Write and Autobiographical Novel

“Near the end of Fonseca, a question is raised: ‘Would you agree it was a treasure hunt that became a mystery that turned into a love story?’ It is all of the above, and more—a sublime imaginative rendering of a lost episode in the life of a famous writer who is unmoored by desperation yet determined to move forward, somehow, even in unfamiliar surroundings. Jessica Francis Kane has written a rich, compelling portrait of human need, desire, and growth. When I finished the last page, I felt the profound satisfaction of having discovered a truly great book.”—Alice Elliott Dark, author of Fellowship Point and In the Gloaming

“Jessica Francis Kane's brilliant and atmospheric novel imagines renowned writer Penelope Fitzgerald's bold journey to Northern Mexico in search of self-reliance—a quest as internal as it is external. In this imaginative, frank, and quietly wrenching book, Kane walks us to a place where we can feel Fitzgerald reach for the freedom which so many women want and deserve—and may never find. Fonseca gets to the heart of what happens when we believe in our dreams, take risks, and are forever changed by the quest itself.”—Megan Mayhew-Bergman, author of How Strange a Season