Fonseca: A Novel

by Jessica Francis Kane

Overview

Named a Must-Read Book for Summer by the LA Times, a Most-Anticipated Book of 2025 by Lit Hub and Publishers Weekly, and a best book of August by Town and Country and Foreign Policy • Library Journal Title to Watch

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593298862
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/12/2025
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	4 MB

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.

Read an Excerpt

¨Day of the Dead ¨

In 1952 November 2 fell on a Sunday, and that afternoon a mother and son stood in front of the Delaney house in Fonseca, Mexico, poised to knock. They had traveled a long way, were quite stunned, mainly from the last leg of their journey through the American South, and now it was late afternoon the day after the day they were supposed to have arrived. The season was warm, and in the square behind them people were wearing calaveras and the air smelled of smoke and marigolds. In the distance and also quite nearby they heard the pop and spray of fireworks. A band was playing in the square, the music brassy and bright, punctuated by shouts. It was all very disconcerting, and even though he didn't know who or what was behind the door, the boy wanted to go inside. In all his six years, he had never entered a house that did not have someone making or about to make tea. But his mother would not knock.

"This isn't a holiday," Valpy said, turning to sit down on the front step. A young woman passed chewing a large sugar calavera with the name Pedro across the forehead. She was sobbing and laughing at the same time.

Penelope sat down next to him. "How can you tell?"

"I've never had new clothes for a holiday before."

"That's not true. What about your bathing costume last summer?"

He didn't say anything. They both knew bathing costumes didn't count.

"And this is a very strange house." The gray stone with wood shutters in the French style was at odds with all the buildings around it, every one stucco in the colors of sunset. The house stood right up against the pavement, three gabled sections around a shallow front courtyard. Five steps led up from the front wall to what looked like the door of a castle keep, old oak with iron bolts and bars. Above and to the left was a heavy, rounded balcony that reminded Penelope of a pulpit. There were several tall chimneys, two dormers, and a number of mullioned windows in various sizes, all shuttered. Old, twisted pecan trees on the street further darkened the front.

"Yes, but there's nothing to be afraid of," Penelope said.

This was an error. Valpy had not said he was afraid, and now Penelope saw that he was looking at the trees and the heavy little balcony and wondering if he should be. "We were invited," she reminded him quickly.

"But why were we invited?"

"The Delaneys are old friends."

"But why do they want to see us?"

Later, when the house in Southwold was emptied, and even later, when their houseboat Grace went down, Penelope would remember this moment on the step of the house in Fonseca. Everyone has a point to which the mind reverts naturally when it is left on its own. This was hers.

"It's hard to explain," she said.

This was not untrue. The Delaneys, two wealthy old women, had written to Penelope more than half a year ago to say they were alone in the world, all their relations in Ireland were gone, and because of some distant friendship between their families, they hoped to meet Valpy. Indeed, if Penelope had understood their letters correctly, they suggested they might leave him all their money. This possibility was tantalizing for a number of very pressing reasons. She stood and knocked quickly, pecan shells cracking underfoot.

"Dios mío, two of you!" the housekeeper exclaimed, pulling open the heavy door. "Have you just come from the bus?" She was about fifty, with wide, bare arms under a red apron. Her dark hair was pulled into a middle part, the length of it braided and wound on top of her head, a yellow marigold tucked behind one ear, heavy cheeks flushed under blue eyes. Penelope, who was not particularly tall, towered over her.

Valpy bravely cleared his throat. "Yes, but first we were on the Queen Mary, then the bus. It was a long and terrible ride. Actually, first we were on a train, but that wasn't part of the adventure because it was still in England."

"That sounds right. Very few adventures begin and end in England. Where was the boat's port of call?"

"New York," Valpy answered.

"Good. One of you can take the bus back there." She took Valpy's hand, suggesting Penelope would be the one returning.

Penelope countered with a hand to Valpy's shoulder. "But I notified Doña Elena that we were both coming."

"I don't remember that letter."

"Yet you know it was a letter."

"How else would you have told her?"

"I might have sent a telegram. Or phoned."

The housekeeper narrowed her eyes. "Too expensive." She adjusted the marigold behind her ear. "We expected you yesterday."

"I'm sorry. We were delayed in San Antonio."

"That was the terrible part," Valpy said.

The housekeeper nodded as if she understood, but how could she have known what happened?

The three stood on the doorstep, seemingly at an impasse. Finally Penelope said, "This is ridiculous! He's only six years old. He never could have made this journey alone."

"Why?" the housekeeper said, scrutinizing Valpy. "Is there something wrong with him?"

Valpy shook his head.

"Of course not," Penelope said. "But it would be a very long journey for so young a child."

"How far is it?"

Valpy knew the exact mileage from the front door of their house, Chestnut Lodge, Hampstead, London, to the doorstep where they were standing in Zona Centro, Fonseca, Mexico.

"That is far," the housekeeper said. "He should be with his mother."

Penelope was relieved. "Now we agree. I am his mother."

The housekeeper sighed. She stepped backward, pulling the door with her. "I am Chela. Welcome to Mirando."

Penelope didn't move. "I thought this was the Delaney house?"

"Yes, yes, come in."

It was an inauspicious, topsy-turvy start, and Penelope never forgot it.


The large, wood-paneled front hall was decorated for the holiday with potted marigolds lining both sides of the wide center staircase. These were mostly orange, orange threaded with darker orange, and a few yellow here and there. They must have just been watered, for the smell of damp soil filled the hall. Convivial sounds came from the floor above, and there was opera playing somewhere.

"Are you having a party?" Valpy looked hopeful for the first time since they'd knocked.

"No," Chela said. "Those people are here just like you. The Doñas are in the cemetery. Leave your trunk for Jesús." Chela looked at Valpy and then spelled for his benefit. "That's J-E-S-U-S. He will bring it up."

Penelope was troubled by some of this information and Valpy was wide-eyed, but there was no time for questions. Chela moved fast for one so round around the middle. At the top of the staircase, she turned left, then right to the bottom of a smaller staircase. She took this to the third floor and turned right again down a tiled hall, where she stopped in front of a door that looked like it might have once been painted blue.

"Come down when you're ready," she said, not in the least out of breath, "but not before five o'clock. Mr. Azuela will be finished with his report by then. The washroom is down the hall. You'll be sharing with the Tuttles. For some reason they like to say their room faces the sea, but it is six hundred kilometers to the east. Your room faces the mountains, the beautiful Sierra Madre. But don't be fooled. They are farther than they seem."

"Tuttles?" Penelope said.

"An organist and his wife from Ireland. Penniless. No one can remember how long they've been here."

"Do they also have a son?" She had not expected competition.

Chela laughed. "Not that I've seen!" She looked more seriously at Valpy. "Why? Are you worried about being lonely? There is plenty to do at Mirando. We have a garden and chickens, and a flock of mourning doves roosts on the roof. There is also a cat, Pax. He does what he likes and goes where he pleases."

"Thank you," Penelope said. "I'm sure we'll be fine."

"We'll see." Chela opened the once-blue door with a key and ushered them in. "Laundry is on Mondays, bedclothes every other week." She closed the door and left them, the peppery scent of marigolds lingering behind her.

Valpy looked as if he were about to cry. "Are Mr. and Mrs. Tuttle old friends too?"

"I'm sure they are," Penelope said.

The room, up under the eaves of Mirando, had a sloped ceiling and a set of mullioned windows that did indeed, when Penelope opened the shutters, look over rooftops toward the blue-tinged mountains. There was a double bed with a blue quilt, a small desk without a chair, and a wardrobe in the back left corner. To the right was a chaise upholstered in dark red velvet that felt large for the room, but would do nicely as a second bed. There was a glazed jug and basin under a shelf and mirror on the wall, a little wooden bench, and a small electric fan. The room was clean and tidy though the air was still. Penelope turned on the fan.

"Is Jesús going to bring the trunk? Is that really what's going to happen?"

Penelope explained that it was probably not an uncommon name in Spanish.

"We are very far from home," Valpy said.

She was prepared for this and gave him the best advice she had based on her own experience being sent away to school at eight. The words came out with a ferocity that startled them both.

"Homesickness is a real illness, Valpy. Don't believe anyone who tells you it isn't."

Dear --

I was so interested in your letter with its description of how you came to know my mother's work. Interested and also reassured because I can see that you understand her and her life as far as one can ever know or understand other people's lives. I often wonder why I didn't ask her more about herself and decisions she made and then I remember that she always evaded questions and never gave direct or detailed answers.

My brother Valpy lives in a remote mountain village in Spain most of the year though he also has a small town house in Oxford where he was a professor. He would like to get in touch to share his memories of the 1952 trip to Mexico (to Saltillo, not "Fonseca").

Thank you for telling us about Hopper. His Mexican paintings are so atmospheric and you can feel the heat. I think the dividing line between fiction and fact is quite blurred in her biographies and her novels so you push on.

With all best wishes,

Tina

Editorial Reviews

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

“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.” —Alex Chee

“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)

“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

From the Publisher

★ 2025-05-16
A British novelist takes a vexing trip to Mexico, seeking money and inspiration.

Kane’s third novel is based on the true story of a trip taken in 1952 by Penelope Fitzgerald, author of modern classics likeThe Bookshop (1978) andThe Blue Flower (1997), to Saltillo, a desert town in northern Mexico. Two elderly sisters-in-law, the Delaneys, onetime owners of a profitable silver mine, contact Fitzgerald to invite her to visit, noting a distant relation and dangling the possibility of an inheritance. Fitzgerald, pregnant and in dire financial and marital straits—a literary journal she founded with her husband, Desmond, is struggling, and he’s sinking into alcoholism—heads out with her 6-year-old son, Valpy. The women’s manor is impressive, but the Delaneys have their own drinking issues, and there are other visitors competing for the women’s finances—one hoping to build a bird museum, a Catholic priest lamenting various church needs, and so on. Fitzgerald often depicted women in desperate straits through eerily poised prose, and Kane nicely evokes that style here, as Penelope struggles to detect the Delaneys’ intentions, parent Valpy through the confusion, and manage a growing attraction to one of the manor’s visitors. Playing a cameo role is the painter Edward Hopper, who visited Saltillo multiple times with his wife, Jo; though there’s no evidence he and Fitzgerald ever met, Kane nicely deploys Hopper as an inspiration for Penelope’s writing career. The trip was futile in the short run—in aLondon 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 Reviews