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About Fonseca: A Novel

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 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. When she receives a letter from two elderly sisters named Delaney, distant relations with a silver mine, who dangle the possibility of an inheritance, she recognizes it as a creative and practical lifeline. Jessica Francis Kane’s brilliantly imagined Fonseca fictionalizes Penelope’s real and momentous trip to northern Mexico in pursuit of this legacy. 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 frequent the house: 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 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY