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For eight years, journalist Susan Hartman followed three refugees building new lives in the old manufacturing city of Utica, New York:  Sadia, a bright, spirited Somali Bantu teenager who rebels against her formidable mother; Ali, an Iraqi interpreter who creates a home with an American woman but is haunted by war; and Mersiha, a Bosnian baker who gambles everything to open a café.

They are part of a remarkable migration:  Over the past four decades, thousands of refugees—fleeing persecution and war—have revitalized the small upstate city. They were finding their way in a city that needed them.