What is the title of your latest release?
FONSECA
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A British novelist makes a difficult trip to Mexico with her young son, seeking money and inspiration, but nothing goes to plan. Based on the mystery surrounding Penelope Fitzgerald’s real journey in 1952.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I knew it would be set in Saltillo, Mexico, because that is where Fitzgerald went. Interestingly, she never spoke of the trip after she returned and years later when she mentioned it in an essay she called the town “Fonseca,” perhaps a rueful invention, as in Latin it means “dry well.” So her fictionalizing the town’s name gave me room and I decided to make my Fonseca a little magical.
Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Absolutely, though it would probably be a little awkward for both of us. She is British and I would be in awe because she has been my favorite writer for years.
What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Witty, determined, and patient.
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
That I wish I could draw. Fitzgerald was an amateur artist and very informed about art, in general. Her notebooks are full of little sketches. To understand her mindset better, I took an online drawing class while I was writing with the artist Annie Coggan, which was wonderful, but I’m terrible.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
Oh, I edit, probably too much. For years I’ve tried to become the kind of writer who can create a really messy first draft. But I just can’t.
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Marzipan
Describe your writing space/office!
Right now, I am mostly writing at my house in Connecticut where I have a garret-like space under the roof. I love it but it’s not air-conditioned (old house), so when it gets really warm I go to the library. On the flip side, it is very cozy in the winter.
Who is an author you admire?
Lauren Groff. Her novels and stories, her activism, her passion for the work of other writers.
Is there a book that changed your life?
I think Penelope Fitzgerald’s OFFSHORE did. It was the first of her novels I read, in 1999. You could trace a path from my reading that book all those years ago to writing FONSECA.
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
FONSECA is the first book I’ve sold on a partial manuscript. My previous novel, RULES FOR VISITING, had done well at Penguin Press and I knew I had a chance to publish again with them. My editor loved the idea of FONSECA and asked me to show her the first fifty pages. I had maybe 2. But it was the summer of 2020, we were in pandemic lockdown, so I got to work. I’ve never written so fast and when she accepted the pages, I was thrilled — and thought I’d finish in a year. It took me four!
What’s your favorite genre to read?
Literary fiction
What’s your favorite movie?
It’s an older one, but I think of it so often: Amadeus. The depiction of genius (Mozart) and jealousy (Salieri) have stayed with me for years.
What is your favorite season?
Autumn
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I like to see something new or make a memory. My husband and I will get tickets to a play or go to a museum or take a long walk somewhere we haven’t been.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I really enjoyed “Your Friends and Neighbors” with Jon Hamm. I don’t always like a voice-over, but Hamm was great at it.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
I really like Mexican, and I’m not saying this because of FONSECA! I went to Mexico City recently for the first time and was enthralled by the food.
What do you do when you have free time?
I like to run and work in my garden.
What can readers expect from you next?
Another collection of short stories, I hope.
FONSECA by 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.
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About Jessica Francis Kane
Jessica Francis Kane is the author of the story collection Bending Heaven. Her stories have been broadcast on BBC radio and have appeared in a many publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s, the Missouri Review, and Michigan Quarterly Review. Her essays and humor pieces have appeared in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and The Morning News.org. She lives in New York with her husband and their two children.
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