Out the Back Door

Life was pretty good in Atlanta for Tim and Tracy Latner and their two children. Tim managed a steak restaurant, Tracy was a financial planner for Merrill Lynch, Alex was one of the best grade school girl basketball players in the area, and younger brother Casey played whatever his friends played, usually baseball or sometimes basketball.

But occasional escapes to beautiful western North Carolina near Asheville began to gnaw at their hearts. Why not move there? Then COVID-19 hit, Tim became less satisfied with managing the restaurant, and Tracy discovered Jack Bogle’s (founder of Vanguard funds) wisdom to buy and hold low-cost market index funds which lead her away from full-service (pricy) brokers toward self-employment.

And so, in 2022, Tim and Tracy and the kids moved, on faith and hope but no jobs, to Burnsville NC, the quant little gateway town to Mt. Mitchell. Finding well-paying jobs in the NC mountains has never been easy, and that’s why so many people follow their brains to bigger cities such as Atlanta.

“Out the Back Door” is a story set in western NC about this gutsy family with heart, featuring meaningful and quirky conversations about life, religion, pickleball, tadpoles, compound interest, middle school gym, free markets, Milton Friedman, and government overreach. Take a look inside the Latner’s family and friends to see how they adapt to Burnsville, and how they nurture shields against groupthink on climate change, corporate, government or university “wokeness,” and race-relation hustlers that dominate much of American culture.