A memoir about leaving home, getting into trouble, finding your way, and discovering that sometimes going back is how you figure out how far you've come.
Coming 2027
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About This Book
At seventeen, Jason McClure is renting a windowless room, working at KFC, and finishing high school. Within a year, he’ll be in college, although no one, including Jason, seems entirely sure how that happened.
Then a historic building in a local park burns.
The sheriff decides Jason and two other teenagers are responsible.
Jason keeps going.
Along the way, he accidentally lassoes a horse, builds a snow-cone business, survives a chase by the Tin Man, travels halfway across the country with a roommate and two Mormon missionaries for cheesecake, and discovers that growing up rarely happens according to plan.
At first, these are funny stories about a kid having a good time and occasionally making questionable decisions. But the roommates, bad jobs, parties, girlfriends, professors, cops, and strangers begin to accumulate. People Jason barely notices become mentors. Mistakes become turning points. And a story about getting through college slowly becomes a story about the people who help us become who we are.
There and Back and Back Again is a coming-of-age memoir about friendship, consequence, second chances, and the strange collection of people and accidents that can change the direction of a life. And, occasionally, cheesecake.
About Jason McClure
Jason McClure grew up in rural Arkansas and has spent much of his adult life doing things he wasn't particularly qualified to do until after he'd already started doing them.He has been a fried chicken cook, jackhammer operator, teacher, consultant, entrepreneur, author, and HVAC contractor. He holds graduate degrees in business and organizational communication and studied applied statistics.There and Back and Back Again is his memoir about the considerably less orderly path between those things.
“Funny, strange, and unexpectedly moving. There and Back and Back Again begins like a collection of unbelievable stories and slowly reveals something much bigger: how the people we barely notice can shape the rest of our lives.”
Advance Praise
“McClure writes about growing up without pretending he understood what was happening while it happened. The result is funny, honest, occasionally absurd, and remarkably human.”
“You start reading for the stories. You keep reading for the people. By the end, you realize the book has quietly become about home, memory, second chances, and the long road back to where you started.”