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Jessica Francis Kane

Biography

Jessica Francis Kane

Jessica Francis Kane is the author of FONSECA, 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.

Jessica Francis Kane

Books by Jessica Francis Kane

Fonseca
by Jessica Francis Kane - Fiction, Historical Fiction, Women's Fiction

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. 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 according to plan. Others are 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.

Rules for Visiting
by Jessica Francis Kane - Fiction, Women's Fiction

Dry, witty and unapologetic, May Attaway loves literature and her work as a botanist for the university in her hometown. More at home with plants than people, May begins to suspect that she isn’t very good at friendship and wonders if it’s possible to improve with practice. Granted some leave from her job, she sets out on a journey to spend time with four long-neglected friends. RULES FOR VISITING is the story of a search for friendship in the digital age, a singular look at the way we stay in touch. While May travels, she studies her friends’ lives and begins to confront the pain of her own.

The Report
by Jessica Francis Kane - Fiction, Historical Fiction

On a March night in 1943, on the steps of a London Tube station, 173 people die in a crowd seeking shelter from what seemed to be another air raid. When the devastated neighborhood demands an inquiry, the job falls to magistrate Laurence Dunne. As Dunne investigates, he finds the truth to be precarious, even damaging. When he is forced to reflect on his report several decades later, he must consider whether the course he chose was the right one.