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Jessica Francis Kane on her new novel, 'Fonseca'

Jessica Francis Kane is the author of "Forseca."
Beowulf Sheehan
Jessica Francis Kane is the author of "Forseca."

Author Jessica Francis Kane has a favorite author: Penelope Fitzgerald, whose work was shortlisted for the 1979 Booker Prize. Fitzgerald’s life has been documented through biography, but details from a trip taken by Fitzgerald with her young son to a small town in Northern Mexico are often missing from biographies about the author’s life. Fitzgerald laid out the plot herself in an essay that appeared in the London Review of Books in 1980. Titled “Following the plot,” it outlined the trip to Mexico, an invitation extended to Fitzgerald to potentially secure a legacy for the family. Jessica Francis Kane followed the plot in her fictionalized version of the trip in the novel Fonseca.


Fonseca by Jessica Francis Kane was published by Penguin Press.

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Beth Golay is KMUW's Director of Marketing and Digital Content. She is the host of the KMUW podcast Marginalia, co-host with Suzanne Perez of the Books & Whatnot podcast, creator of the podcast You're Saying It Wrong, creator of KMUW's daily news podcast Wichita's Early Edition, and NPR StoryLab Workshop team member on the award-winning podcast My Fellow Kansans.