In settings from Jerusalem to Manhattan, from the archaeological ruins of the Galilee to Kathmandu, "The Pale of Settlement" gives us characters who struggle to piece together the history and myths of their family's past.

This collection of linked short stories takes its title from the name of the western border region of the Russian empire within which Jews were required to live during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Susan, the stories' main character, is a woman trapped in her own border region between youth and adulthood, familial roots in the Middle East and a typical...