Reimagining History in Fiction

Desire, defiance, and reinvention shape these bold reimaginings of women in history. Authors Allegra Goodman and Jessica Francis Kane foreground women’s desire and defiance in a joint conversation about retelling history. In Isola, Goodman draws inspiration from a sixteenth-century French heroine to unravel the tale of Marguerite as she learns love and survival, forced out of her life of luxury into one of exile and abandonment. In Fonseca, Kane fictionalizes English writer Penelope Fitzgerald’s journey to Mexico and her desperate search for a promised inheritance, only to be met with twists and turns, mysterious figures, and quick-witted competitors.