Fonseca

A Novel

De: Jessica Francis Kane

Narrado por: Cerris Morgan-Moyer, Nicholas Guy Smith, Christine Rendel, Jessica Francis Kane

Named a Must-Read Book for Summer by the LA Times and a Most-Anticipated Book of 2025 by Lit Hub • 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.


© 2025 Heirs of Josephine N. Hopper / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY

Superb performance of an evocative novel

An intriguing and appealing cast of characters gathered in a colorful location. Highly recommended for fans of Penelope Fitzgerald's novels. The principal narrator is simply superb in bringing this book to vivid life.

The setting in Mexico in the time period was very engaging

The narration of Valpy was very distracting, even grating. A lovely story and the rest of the narration was fine, but a little disappointing a child does not maintain a voice like that.