Lewiston, Maine and Somalia are nearly 7,000 miles apart, and could not be more different culturally. Or could not have been, past tense.
Because Lewiston is now home to thousands of people who fled war and oppression to make Maine their new home. Cynthia Anderson tells the story in Home Now: How 6000 Refugees Transformed an American Town. Anderson is from Western Maine, and watched as the new arrivals transformed a city already battered by years of local factories shutting.