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These stories are NOT about individuals in DP camps.  Rather the 14 short stories are about real individuals in the 21st century. 

Rather, each story features one or more "displaced persons" struggling to fit into a world that bears little resemblance to the one left behind. Some characters manage the transition with limited difficulty, some take years even to begin feeling comfortable with the change, and others never manage the job at all. Regardless, Leegant's people have more in common than not.

Seven stories are set in Israel and are primarily about those who left a homeland and the people they left behind, such as "The Baghdadi," in which an Iraqi Jew moves to Israel against the wishes of his father, or the story about a young Israeli who, against the wishes of his mother, wants to make a fresh start by moving to Germany. There are also stories about "displaced” Americans in Israel who are naive enough to get themselves into dangerous situations from which they will be lucky to escape. And there are stories about others who come to Israel for a short visit only to find that they have finally found in Israel the real home they've been yearning for

The seven stories in "Part Two: The West" are about a different kind of displacement, one in which American Jewish families are more often than not coming apart at the seams. These stories are more about generational and religious displacement than about the physical kind. Some stories tell of children who no longer feel connected to the old ways of their immigrant parents, others of disillusioned elders who have lost the faith much to the dismay of their children. There are stories here about redemption and the kind of wisdom that comes only with age and experience. They are stories about people trying to figure out who they are and where they fit into the world.

Displaced Persons offers, I think, an especially timely glimpse into Jewish life both in Israel and in the United States, and what it is like to be caught between those two very different worlds during the turbulent times we live in today. Joan Leegant has packed so much into these twenty-something-page stories that I will remember them for a long time to come.  While the book is quite new, it has already won several awards, including the New American Fiction Prize and is was selected for the Hadassah National Book Club and the Woman’s League Reads book lists for 2025.