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+ 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, and the reaction from the folks in Red Lake County was less than warm, to put it mildly. So how did Ingraham and his family find themselves moving to that very spot just a few years later?
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. It’s a wry and charming tale of what happened to one family brave enough to move well beyond its comfort zone.
Christopher Ingraham is a reporter for the Washington Post, writing about all things data, with a particular interest in wealth, happiness, and inequality. He previously worked at the Brookings Institution and the Pew Research Center. If You Lived Here You’d Be Home by Now is his first book.
