Who knew we had a published writer in our midst? Meet Lavista Associates' Charlie Fiveash--veteran real estate broker with experience at both Carter and AMB Property, youth sports coach, Sunday school teacher, author. Charlie published this past month his debut novel “Return to Tobacco Road,” a novel about an investment banker who leaves his life in Boston to return to his family's tobacco farm to uncover secrets. Charlie self-published on Amazon.com.

“I call it my recession beater book,” Charlie tells us. “I didn't know I was a writer either. It was just something on the bucket list.” He began the novel six years ago, and trained himself to rise early in the morning to write. The story is inspired from his own experience on his mom's farm in Eastern North Carolina as a child, a place Charlie says was a good backdrop for a story. The story itself is all about decisions, the ones we make in life, for good or for ill, he adds. Charlie's now on to his second novel--a family drama based on a plantation in Southwest Georgia--that will come out in the middle of this year.