Fonseca - by Jessica Francis Kane (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Named a Top 10 Historical Fiction Book of 2025 by the New York Times Book Review
Named a Best Book of the Year by Esquire, Kirkus, and the Chicago Tribune Biblioracle
Named a Best Historical Fiction Book and Best Audio Book of the Year by Bookpage
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

"Kane's remarkable excavation of this interlude, including real letters from Valpy, drips with juicy conflict and detail." --Los Angeles Times

"A fable with heart and a searching investigation into what makes a marriage endure." --Boston Globe

"A marvel of sharp concision." --Wall Street Journal

"A daring book . . . fresh and beautiful." --Chicago Tribune

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

Penelope Fitzgerald's charming husband is a struggling alcoholic, the London literary magazine they edit together is on the brink of bankruptcy, and she is pregnant with their third child. When she receives a mysterious letter dangling the possibility of an inheritance, Penelope sees a creative and practical lifeline that might save them. Based on Fitzgerald's momentous 1952 trip to northern Mexico before she was famous, Jessica Francis Kane's brilliantly imagined Fonseca is both a treasure hunt and a love story.

Blending history, biography, and fiction, Kane has created an enthralling world while telling a story about how far someone might go in pursuit of a dream.

Review Quotes

"Penelope Fitzgerald visited a deeply eccentric expat household in Mexico [and] . . . Thankfully, Kane was inspired to follow the trail. . . . Fonseca deploys an understated wit and bittersweet wisdom reminiscent of Fitzgerald's own work. . . . As befits an homage to Fitzgerald, the dividing line between fact and fiction is very blurred. And very entertaining." --The New York Times (Editors' Choice)

"'Fonseca' ('dry well' in Latin) is how Fitzgerald always referred to Saltillo, but Kane's remarkable excavation of this interlude, including real letters from Valpy, drips with juicy conflict and detail." --Los Angeles Times

"It offers a deliciously wry expansion on a real but little-known episode in the life of the late-blooming English writer Penelope Fitzgerald... Ms. Kane's "Fonseca" is a marvel of sharp concision." --Heller McAlpin, Wall Street Journal

". . . a fable with heart and a searching investigation into what makes a marriage endure. A market saturated with divorce memoirs can only benefit from Kane's candor..." --Hamilton Cain, Boston Globe

"Fonseca is a daring book. . . . Kane . . . has taken a real-life incident from Fitzgerald's pre-novelist life and spun it into something very much like a Penelope Fitzgerald novel, while also clearly being its own distinct entity... Thanks to Kane's deft touch, every moment is infused with a deep, lived-in feeling. . . . Letters from [Fitzgerald's children] Valpy and Tina . . . are sprinkled throughout and highlight the daring of Kane's invention. Fitzgerald lived and wrote; we can know her. Jessica Francis Kane has taken this knowing and made something fresh and beautiful." --Chicago Tribune

"[Fonseca is] a sensitive and poignant chronicle of [Fitzgerald's] unusual creative path... Kane succeeds in evoking an unorthodox heroine who is simultaneously a devoted mother deferring her artistic goals to be a breadwinner and a dogged writer compromising some domestic stability for her creative life." --Washington Post

"You don't need to know anything about Penelope Fitzgerald to be swept away by Kane's gorgeous prose, dry wit, and strong sense of place. This is a delightful comedy of manners that honors Fitzgerald's legacy so well, it feels like one of her own novels." --Adam Morgan, Esquire

"This masterful novel, a luminous exploration of a woman's resilience, draws from a 1952 journey British author Penelope Fitzgerald made to Mexico." --Publishers Weekly 2025 Holiday Gift Guide

"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

"Kane has constructed a wondrous tale of revelation and resilience." --Washington Independent Review of Books

"Recommended as a well-researched literary novel that sheds light on a little-known venture of a beloved British author." --Historical Novel Society

"Enthralling and elegantly written, "Fonseca" is a richly imagined, vibrant portrait of previously unexplored months in Booker Prize-winning novelist Fitzgerald's life." --Janet Somerville, Toronto Star

"A self-proclaimed Fitzgerald fan, Kane pays eloquent, empathetic homage to her literary hero." --Carol Haggas, Booklist (starred review)

"A masterful novel... Adding to the rich tension between fact and fiction are undated letters from the real Valpy and Fitzgerald's older daughter, Tina, to an unidentified recipient concerning the 1952 trip. It amounts to a luminous exploration of a woman's desperation and resilience." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Kane's third novel is based on the true story of a trip taken in 1952 by Penelope Fitzgerald . . . The trip was futile in the short run--in a London Review of Books essay, Fitzgerald called Saltillo 'Fonseca, ' Latin for 'dry well'--but, in Kane's hands, profoundly influential. The novel also includes actual letters from Fitzgerald's children, bolstering the sense that their mother's trip to Mexico was thick with mysteries. Kane's novel elegantly fills in the gaps. A finely turned novel that evokes its subject's gift for slyly biting domestic tales." --Kirkus (starred review)

"Kane's deeply researched, wonderfully imagined third novel... Kane has seeded her novel with every morsel of detail she can find, including her correspondence with two of Fitzgerald's three children, Valpy and Tina, whose emails are beautifully and intruiguingly interspersed into the novel... Kane infused Fonseca with a big, beautiful blur of fact and fiction. She writes with a winning combination of fascinating detail and finely-tuned humor, adding luscious layers of increasing intrigue to her narrative. Don't miss this fine novel, which will likely win Fitzgerald a whole new legion of fans." --BookPage (starred review)

"Kane paints a revealing, multidimensional psychological portrait of Penelope Fitzgerald...the Fitzgerald who appears in Fonseca is a deeply sympathetic character: a loving mother, anguished wife, and writer in whom the fires of literary ambition are smoldering, waiting to burst into flames" --Shelf Awareness

"Kane observes in the acknowledgments that she and Fitzgerald share an interest in the relationship between history, biography, and fiction, and this novel is a beautiful blend of research and imagination... Kane expertly conjures a narrative vision all her own, even as she remains ever faithful to her source." --BookBrowse

"Fonseca is a beautifully written novel about a woman searching for her own story during a precarious moment in her life. Read this book for the mystery, for the joy of encountering the complicated marriage of the artists Jo and Edward Hopper, for the love stories of the main character Penelope: with a handsome stranger, her charming, alcoholic husband, her children, and with herself. This is the novel Penelope Fitzgerald was unable, or unwilling, to write during her own lifetime, and it chimes with quiet, perfect notes. I loved it."-- Ann Napolitano, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hello Beautiful

"Miraculously, wrenching and charming, imaginative and true, Jessica Francis Kane's Fonseca brings the indomitable Penelope Fitzgerald, and this entrancing world of Fonseca, to life. We watch riveted as Fitzgerald grasps at and grabs for the freedom, the art, that so many of us yearn toward, continue doggedly to search for, even as circumstance, family, the dredges and seductions of life continue to get in our way." --Lynn Steger Strong, author of Want

"Jessica Francis Kane has written a vivid and moving novel set in a stunning Mexican landscape. It is inspired by a mysterious journey hidden until now. To tell you more would betray the delicious experience. Highly recommended." --Luis Alberto Urrea, author of Good Night, Irene

"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 an 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

About the Author

Jessica Francis Kane is the author of the national bestseller Rules for Visiting, This Close, The Report, and Bending Heaven. This Close was longlisted for The Story Prize, The Report was a finalist for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and Rules for Visiting was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in many publications, including Harper's Magazine, The New York Times, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney's, ZYZZYVA, and Granta. She lives in New York City and Connecticut.