I loved the short stories in Behind You is the Sea. Unlike many short story collections, all or the stories were good, no story felt like it lagged, and all of them remained distinct in my mind, which is super unusual for me and short story collections. I listened to this one on audiobook and loved it. 

These stories revolve around a Palestinian community in Baltimore, MD. It covered the gamut for ages of characters, values of characters, and acculturation. The characters interconnect in unexpected and often surprising ways, and the woven web of diaspora identities and experiences are plucked multiple times throughout each of these stories.

I liked all of the stories, but the two that stuck out most to me were the one about the divorced lawyer and the last one. Susan Muaddi Darraj really skillfully already shows the shapes and whispers of the main characters of these stories in other previous stories, and these stories bring these characters’ internal worlds and tensions fully into the light. This turns a two dimensional understanding of these characters into a full three dimensions, and allows the reader to see how these folks exist to themselves and within this Palestinian community in Baltimore.