
If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now
Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie
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Narrated by:
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Josh Bloomberg
The hilarious, charming, and candid story of writer Christopher Ingraham’s decision to uproot his life and move his family to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, population 1,400 - the community he made famous as “the worst place to live in America” in a story he wrote for the Washington Post.
Like so many young American couples, Chris Ingraham and his wife Briana were having a difficult time making ends meet as they tried to raise their twin boys in the East Coast suburbs. One day, Chris - in his role as a “data guy” reporter at the Washington Post -stumbled on a study that would change his life. It was a ranking of America’s 3,000 plus counties from ugliest to most scenic. He quickly scrolled to the bottom of the list and gleefully wrote the words “The absolute worst place to live in America is (drumroll please)…Red Lake County, Minn.” The story went viral, to put it mildly.
Among the reactions were many from residents of Red Lake County. While they were unflappably polite - it’s not called “Minnesota Nice” for nothing - they challenged him to look beyond the spreadsheet and actually visit their community. Ingraham, with slight trepidation, accepted. Impressed by the locals’ warmth, humor and hospitality - and ever more aware of his financial situation and torturous commute - Chris and Briana eventually decided to relocate to the town he’d just dragged through the dirt on the Internet.
If You Lived Here You’d Be Home by Now is the story of making a decision that turns all your preconceptions - good and bad - on their heads. In Red Lake County, Ingraham experiences the intensity and power of small-town gossip, struggles to find a decent cup of coffee, suffers through winters with temperatures dropping to 40 below zero, and unearths some truths about small-town life that the coastal media usually miss. It’s a wry and charming tale - with data! - of what happened to one family brave enough to move waaaay beyond its comfort zone.
©2019 Christopher Ingraham (P)2019 HarperAudioListeners also enjoyed...




















A real life awakens.
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This author describes precisely what the current issue is with the modern career structure that forces people and families to squeeze into the impossible demands of keeping up and living and just breathing without always chasing a deadline or always feeling like “you haven’t made it yet”
Minnesota here I come
Loved it. As a millennial I Totally want to move there
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Was a inside view of a mall town America life.
awesome
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Super funny part. The reading of the plum post. And the tossing dead animals in the trash with tons of acreage around in which to bury them. Also, the wet ladder in the treestand. Tickled my funnybone.
The contraption for ice fishing? It's just called a fish finder. We don't care if they work. It's just part of fishing.
While I'm not at all interested in statistics, I loved this story so much that I hated that it was over. Book II, perhaps? Love the everyday living stories.
Loved every bit! 😁
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Lessons for Anyone
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Tangible truth.
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Who knew the DC metro area would be expensive? (Rhetorical question…).
Who would have think it that buying a home, raising 2 children, and holding down 2 full-time jobs would be a difficult time of life? (Rhetorical question, again).
The whining… the whining….. for a guy who works with data, you’d think that he’d be well aware of the economic realities and challenges… but, you’d be wrong if his whining is to be considered.
The people of Red Lake Falls and the kids sound great…. I would have enjoyed the book- and still absorbed the life lessons the author apparently only learned after he whined his way from Maryland to Minnesota- with less whining and a
more conscious contemplation of the impact of the author’s life choices.
Interesting story made less palatable by distinct whining
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Relatable, yet full of curiosity
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Loved his insights on rural, small town life
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Loved it
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