Abstract
ABSTRACTElizabeth Strout’s 2013 novel The Burgess Boys explores class and geographic tensions within a family divided between New York City and Shirley Falls Maine, a depressed former center of textile production. The presence of Somali refugees adds another dimension of conflict to the struggling Maine town. Industrial decline and rapid immigration have fueled populist movements across the West, but Strout’s novel suggests that the fraying of social bonds represents the deepest problem facing American society. As the novel’s featured family repairs itself, its members become better able to address the economic, geographic, and cultural divisions they had formerly confronted separately.
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