Publishers Weekly Must-Read Book for Fall 2025
Named 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
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice . A Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and Esquire
"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.
