Home Now: How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town

Short story author Anderson (River Talk) profiles residents of Lewiston, Maine, in this detailed, sensitive portrait of the city’s revitalization by African immigrants. According to Anderson, the once-prosperous mill town was in sharp decline when the first refugees from Somalia’s civil war, drawn by the low cost of living, safe neighborhoods, and access to public services, arrived in 2001. Today, Anderson writes, Lewiston has the fifth highest per capita Muslim population in the U.S., and roughly 6,000 of the city’s 36,000 residents are African refugees and asylum seekers. Anderson’s subjects include Nasafari Nahumure, a 17-year-old Congolese refugee applying to college, and Fatuma Hussein, a Somali community leader and mother of eight. Anderson recounts the immigrants’ journeys to America and documents their daily lives from spring 2016 to January 2019, including their reactions to President Trump’s election and immigration policies (one of her subjects considers running for office; others report increased incidents of harassment). She also interviews leaders of a local chapter of the anti-Islamist group ACT for America, and expertly captures the multilayered dynamics between Lewiston natives and African immigrants; in one scene, a food pantry volunteer shakes her head in disapproval when two refugees remove sugary cereal from their prepared boxes of food. The result is a vivid and finely tuned portrait of immigration in America. Agent: Jennifer Carlson, Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency. (Oct.)