Unexpected Passages is a graphic memoir that tells the story of the author’s grandfather, Irving’s, remarkable escape from the Holocaust via Poland, Lithuania, Japan, and China, while reflecting on her own Jewish history growing up in the United States, the granddaughter of a survivor. The book explores her family’s Yiddish history and her mother’s decades-long journey toward translating Irving’s Yiddish wartime letters. Kept for more than 50 years, the contents of the letters turned out to contain more questions than answers about her grandfather as a young refugee.