Sometimes you don’t know how perfect a place is… until you’ve left it. That’s what Chuck Palahniuk discovered. He grew up in a part of southeastern Washington, called the Tri-Cities—after the trio of cities clustered along the Columbia River: Richland, Pasco and Kennewick. It’s in this area that, in the 1940s, the federal government bought up a huge piece of land to make plutonium for nuclear bombs. And theTri-Cities are still shaped by the odd hybrid of farming the soils of the region– and plutonium production. Every episode of State of the Re:Union, we ask residents to write a letter to the place they live. Chuck, who’s the author of Fight Club, and several other books, writes that, with time even things you never appreciated become oddly… perfect.

For more on Chuck, visit his website. Or to learn more about the Tri-Cities, check out our hour-long episode about the unlikely perfect place.

For more from State of the Re:Union, subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes and look for a new podcast every two weeks.

The Tri-Cities are Richland, Pasco and Kennewick—3 cities clustered near one another in the vast plains and deserts of Washington state, to the east of the Cascade Mountains. It’s a region that seems like it would have little to attract newcomers—it’s largely remote, prone to dust storms, not close to any major city. But, over the decades, this area has drawn people from the world over, and, in this episode, we’ll explore how and why.

For more information about The Unlikely Perfect Place, visit our episode page for photos, links and music.

And we’d love to hear what you think about this episode. Please comment below to get the conversation started.