Publisher's Synopsis
This trip to the 'Vacationland' of Maine-where the state motto is I Lead-offers an inspiring tale of civility and purpose, of doing the right thing and not just surviving, but prevailing. Led by a freelance reporter who's written for The New Yorker and many national programmes on public radio this is a journey readers will want to experience. When Janet Mills - the first female governor of Maine - delivered her first state of the state speech in January 2020, she thought the lowest point of her first term had already happened - a tragic propane explosion at a business in her hometown. That same day, the US reported its first confirmed COVID case. That March, Ashirah Knapp, co-owner of a family farm and school for sustainable living skills, wife, and mother of two school-age children, wrote the first of 50 weekly letters to Governor Mills expressing empathy and support for the difficult choices she was having to make. The governor came to look forward to those letters, memorialized the
