“Behind You Is the Sea,” the most recent book from Susan Muaddi Darraj, who teaches at Hopkins and Harford County Community College, has a similar linked-stories format as her first two, one of which won the American Book Award. The nine chapters follow three Palestinian immigrant families in Baltimore, the Baladis, the Salamehs, and the Ammars. The main character, threading through all of them, is a Baltimore city policeman named Marcus Salameh. There’s also a high school student, a strip-mall tycoon, a housecleaner, an Audi-driving woman lawyer, and more.Opening with a birth and ending with a funeral, the book is set largely in Baltimore City and Towson, with a final story that takes Marcus to Palestine. My admiration for this juicy, voicey, high energy book was echoed in a host of critical raves it received upon publication early this year. As Diana Abu Jaber wrote in the Washington Post, “The book is filled with stories of immigrant parents who can’t make sense of their American children, but there are also shimmering moments of revelation and reconciliation.” The book’s utter resistance to stereotypes and cliches about Arab people is crystallized in a story set in a Baltimore high school putting on a production of Aladdin.  With the novel coming out in paperback this week – auspiciously, the week of the ceasefire in Gaza — we caught up with Darraj to discuss “Behind You Is The Sea.”Marion Winik: “Behind You Is The Sea” is your debut novel – can you explain how it differs from the previous collections of linked stories?Susan Muaddi Darraj: Initially, I did try to write this book with a single narrator, from the perspective of Marcus, but then I realized he had a condescending attitude toward the elders. And even though his commentary was funny, it didn’t account for the challenges his parents’ generation faced. Thy never had a chance to land on their  feet. They had to learn a lot as soon as they arrived, had to deal with their trauma in their own hodgepodge ways, and it seemed was unfair for him to critique them without at least giving them the microphone for a while. So that led to the wedding story with Mr. Ammar. MW: It sounds funny to say that  Marcus had a condescending attitude. You made him up. Why couldn’t you just change his attitude?SMD: It’s just how they come, how they arrive in your head. If you change one thing, it changes this other thing. And though he’s a flawed character, he’s got a lot to learn, he’s a wonderful character.  I have a crush on Marcus.MW: We all do, by the last story. SMD: But he’s also insensitive. He’s not really nice to his girlfriend. She’s been waiting around hoping he’s going to marry her, and he knows he’s not, and he’s kind of a jerk in some ways. I didn’t think he was doing a good job narrating, so I began to pass around the point of view, stopping the story, moving it forward, entering it from a different angle. It’s an episodic novel, a mosaic novel, yet the overall arc belongs to Marcus.MW: Did you grow up in Baltimore in a community like the one in the book? SMD: I grew up in Philadelphia, in a community like the one in the book, but I’ve been here for nearly 25 years. When I first came to Baltimore in 2001, I was really struck by how segregated the city is. It’s a wonderful city, and I love being part of this community, but I thought that it would be interesting if I took my characters, who have themselves experienced separation and marginalization, and put them in a city that hasn’t reconciled its own past, where racism is still affecting the current geography. Like in the title story, where Maysoon is driving to Guilford to clean a house, and as she approaches feels a distinct sense she doesn’t belong.MW: Did you do any research for the novel?SMD: I have some friends who are police officers, and I interviewed them, and showed them all Marcus’s dialogue. And “The Hashtag” is based on an actual  murder that took place in Palestine a few years ago. Her name was Israa Ghrayeb, and she was murdered by her family. They lied, saying that she killed herself, but her friends knew that wasn’t possible. And so they started a social media campaign, #justiceforisraa. It caught on like wildfire way before it ever made its way into the the Western newspapers. At first, I really struggled to write that story. I just kept backing out, backing out until I landed on Rania Mahfouz’s perspective. Her husband has just returned from a work trip Palestine, where he also attended the funeral of a young female cousin. The truth turns out to be a bit more complicated than that. MW: Can you talk about what you’re working on now?SMD: I’m actually working on a sequel, a novel about Marcus and Rita, whom we meet in the last story, with a dual point of view. MW: How thrilling, I can’t wait to read it. What a great way to follow the success of this one!SMD: To be honest with you, I actually thought this book might be canceled, because my agent sold it in the fall of 2022, right before October 7th happened. One of the outcomes of that was a lot of Palestinian voices were being silenced. I had events cancelled; the ceremony to honor the great author Adania Shibli at the Frankfurt book fair was cancelled. Fortunately, HarperCollins published as planned, and by the early winter of 2024, the mood had changed a bit. I was very pleased by the book’s reception – especially when people told me they picked it up hoping to learn something about an unfamiliar culture, but ended up feeling very connected to my characters.***Behind You Is the Sea, by Susan Muaddi DarrajHarperVia, 272 pp., $16.99