Redneck Around the World: Lessons in Grit and Grace — book cover by Jerry Evan Rogers

Where to get it

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About the Book

Lessons in Grit and Grace

Redneck Around the World is a memoir-meets-manifesto chronicling one man's unapologetic journey from the Idaho backwoods to global arenas. Armed with the original IBM portable computer — an early beast of a machine that looked and felt like hauling around a heavy sewing machine — and wearing a fishing hat covered in international pins, our redneck hero defies stereotypes and gatekeepers alike as he navigates airports, boardrooms, and cultural collisions with humor, humility, and fierce intentionality.

This book blends laugh-out-loud travel tales with hard-earned lessons in resilience, reinvention, and reclaiming identity. From Tokyo train stations to London business lounges, Sydney harbors to Dublin pubs, Anchorage mud to Honolulu sunsets, each chapter captures a moment of transformation — where grit meets grace, and redneck roots become a passport to purpose. Whether he's hacking his way through customs or decoding a new language, the author invites readers to embrace their quirks, own their contradictions, and live boldly beyond borders.

It's more than a travelogue. It's a tribute to the power of intentional living, the beauty of being underestimated, and the joy of carrying your past into your future with pride.

Tropes & themes

Late-life reinvention
Being underestimated
Southern & mountain humor
Fish-out-of-water travel
Family, told loud
Grit meeting grace
Blue-collar to boardroom
Fatherhood, unfiltered

Who it's for

★Anybody who's been underestimated and used it as fuel
★Readers who like their memoirs funny first and wise second
★Travelers who've been the fish out of water in somebody else's country
★Dads, granddads, and the people who put up with them
★Folks who grew up with a grandma who cussed like a sailor and prayed like a saint

What's inside

→Chapter 1 — 1960's: Redneck Roots & Family Stories
→Chapter 2 — The Ole Family Stories
→Chapter 3 — Growing Up in Our Town
→Chapter 4 — The Peacekeeper's Curse
→Chapter 5 — Navigating Youth in the Rockies
→Chapter 6 — From Flood Mud to Morning Light
→Chapter 7 — A Redneck's Rite of Passage
→Chapter 9 — Stab at an Education
→Chapter 10 — California Turbo-Tech
→Chapter 11 — From Computer Tech to International Trainer
→Chapter 12 — Favorite Places: Culture Shock and Awe-Dapt
→Chapter 13 — Life On the Road, and Again
→Chapter 14 — Home Again: Facing Down the Wild Boar
→Chapter 15 — Passport to Perspectives
→Chapter 16 — On the Road at 40,000 Feet
→Chapter 17 — Travel Risks and City Issues
→Chapter 18 — Hooked on Alaska
→Chapter 19 — Classroom Calamity
→Chapter 20 — The Birds and the Bees
→Chapter 21 — Learning New Normals
→Chapter 22 — The Redneck's Guide to Living
→Chapter 23 — Bonus Quotes
→Young Hustler's Toolkit & Computer Timeline

Sample chapter

Chapter 2 — The Ole Family Stories

Locked IN the OUT HOUSE

On the weekend of our honeymoon, my family convinced my wife and I to camp with them the first night. We slept in the back of our station wagon. It was generally a bad idea for honeymooners. We were not happy campers.

The highlight of the night was when, after dinner and sitting around the campfire, my wife heard my sister yelling softly — Help! Help! Help! She was looking for someone to come rescue her out of the outhouse where she had been accidentally locked in for more than an hour.