Christopher Ingraham: If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now

If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now: Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie – Christopher Ingraham – 9780062861474 – Harper Collins – Hardcover – 288 pages – $24.99 – September 10, 2019 – ebook version available at lower prices.

Despite both having good jobs, Chris Ingraham, a data reporter at the Washington Post, and his wife Briana, an administrator at a Social Security office, were having trouble with the mechanics of raising twin boys in the expensive metro area suburbs. One day, Chris wrote an article that would change his life. It was based on a USDA ranking of America’s 3,000+ counties from ugliest to most scenic. Chris found Red Lake County, Minnesota at the bottom of the list and without thinking about the people who lived there, called it “The absolute worst place to live in America.” In the quiet of an end of summer news cycle, his seemingly innocuous story went viral with a vengeance.

And unsurprisingly, some of the strongest reactions came from residents of Red Lake County. In their “Minnesota Nice” way, they asked him to think outside the numbers, and actually visit their community, and Chris, perhaps against his better judgement, agreed to fly to this isolated area of northwestern Minnesota to see for himself. He was surprised by the people he found there, not just because they were nice, but because the small towns and rural areas of northern Minnesota – miles from the nearest Whole Foods and Starbucks – turned out to be more than nice, but warm, familial and interesting.

But the big twist in the story turns out to be that after realizing how hard it was for them to live happily where they were, Chris and Briana and their kids decided to pick up stakes and move to the same Minnesota community his article had dissed in the first place.

If You Lived Here You’d Be Home by Now is ultimately, then about what happens when you make a momentous life decision that changes your life and challenges everything you think you know about yourselves and your country. In Red Lake County, the Ingraham family experience the travails of small-town gossip, learn how to deal with “real” winters in a place where temperatures commonly reach forty below zero, try to understand new activities like hunting and hockey, and how to relate to nearby neighbors who know everything about your daily comings and goings. But they also learn the joys and pleasures of life in a small community, where what you do can make a huge difference. Ingraham has a great sense of humor and is a natural storyteller. And while not everything that happens to them is either uplifting or transcendent, there is a lot here for all of us to learn about the truths and myths of small town life in America.

Ingraham has the benefit of being able to work remotely for the Washington Post, so he at least does not have to struggle with the difficulty of finding work in a small town, something that is a huge problem for many Americans who do want to stay in their hometowns. And not everyone who chooses to live in small town America is either some sort of hero or a victim of bad judgment; life is much more complex than that. The story of Chris and Briana and their kids making a massive life change is a great reminder, however, that there is so much experience in rural areas that is worthy of celebrating and preserving, before our entire country becomes a giant suburban mall.

“Thank you, Christopher Ingraham for venturing out of the bubble of stereotyping and misunderstanding that often confines American urbanites who never leave the city and smugly judge rural Americans from their leather couches. I love Mr. Ingraham for his open mind and reporter’s grasp of detail and complicated truth. He captures the charm of a small town entertainingly, without sentimentality or the canned platitudes of those who drop in for a day and count themselves expert analysts after lunchtime. Good work!”
– George Hodgman, NY Times bestselling author of Bettyville

I am pleased to announce a new enhancement to Writerscast — all the books we feature are available for purchase from our friends at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Connecticut.

You can buy a copy of If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now, and know that by doing so, you are supporting independent bookselling. Click on this link to visit the RJ Julia bookstore site.

A fun PBS story about Chris, family, Minnesota and the book is here.

 

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