Displaced Persons
By Joan Leegant (New American Press)

An aching heart. An addled brain. A guilty conscience. The characters in Joan Leegant’s deeply affecting collection of stories, winner of the 2022 New American Fiction Prize, suffer from manifold afflictions of the body and mind that propel them to take flight in search of terra firma—solid ground on which to repair and rebuild themselves after loss. Yet whatever their reasons for fleeing, many of them remain Jews in the wilderness, in terra incognita, perhaps no more secure on new shores than they had been in their old lives.

The first seven of Leegant’s 14 stories take place in Israel, where several of her characters are highly educated American Jewish women seeking refuge after various traumas.

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Virtual Event: One Book, One Hadassah 

Join us on Thursday, August 22 at 7 PM ET, as author Joan Leegant discusses her award-winning collection of short stories, Displaced Persons, with Hadassah Magazine Executive Editor Lisa. Free and open to all.

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In “Remittances,” Robin, a doctoral dropout whose departure from Yale and move to Israel followed a violent episode that has left her scarred, finds a commonality in the plight of the immigrant workers who clean her neighbors’ apartments. “She is struggling with the rag,” Robin observes of a Filipina maid, “standing on tiptoe on the rickety stepstool, trying in vain to expand her reach in hopes of earning something, anything, and I put down the phone, unable to stop watching….”

The latter half of the stories, equally strong, revolve around Jews in America whose journeys promise a whiff of hope or redemption. The unnamed mother in “The Natural World,” a secular Jew, searches a South Dakota phonebook in vain for Cohens, Goldbergs and Kaplans. “I barely acknowledge the whole ethnic thing at home, but suddenly it’s supremely important to assure myself there are Jews in Rapid City,” she says.

Leegant has written gorgeous tales of wandering Jews. Her characters may have a hard time settling into their lives, but her readers will find themselves comfortably ensconced in her stories from start to finish.

 

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Robert Nagler Miller writes frequently about the arts, literature and Jewish themes from his home in Chicago.