Fonseca

Winter of 1952. Penelope Fitzgerald's life is falling apart: her brilliant but alcoholic husband can no longer support the household; debts are mounting, and she, pregnant with her third child, sees little way out. Then an unusual letter arrives: the Delaney sisters, two elderly Irish women with a silver mine in northern Mexico, claim to want to leave their son Valpy a life-saving inheritance. So Penelope crosses the ocean with the boy to Fonseca, a remote mansion in the heart of the desert. But nothing matches the promise. The house is home to fortune seekers, an overly ambitious American couple, wandering artists —among them Edward Hopper and his wife— merchants, opportunists… and a man who claims to be the rightful heir. For three months, between the Day of the Dead and Candlemas, Penelope must navigate intrigues, fragile loyalties, and an almost novelistic landscape. Fonseca becomes, in her initiatory journey, the unexpected prelude to one of the great writers of the 20th century.