By M. Ernest Johnson

Mr. Ledbetter’s Boots

A Novel

Follow the epic journey of Raymond Ulysses Ledbetter, a modest North Carolina farm boy who becomes a Tuskegee Airman legend when a dogfight over the Austrian Alps in 1945 sends him spiraling toward a 12,000-foot mountain range and into history. Now 95, this improbability of humanity intends to become the oldest known person to complete the iconic 40-mile hike into Nepal’s Everest Base Camp.

Traveling with Raymond is a young, hotshot journalist looking to raise his own stock in the world of social-justice broadcast news. Little does he know that the old man’s strange hiking boots hold a secret that will turn the adventure on its head.

about

M. Ernest Johnson

Raised on a North Carolina Christmas tree farm, I cut my literary teeth on Louis L’Amour, Roald Dahl, Tolkien, Hardy Boys Mysteries, Stephen King, and the like. Following in the footsteps of my  father — former editor of Progressive Farmer magazine — I earned a degree in English with the intention to become a writer. Then — as you do — I spent the next 15 years as a Nashville singer-songwriter and traveling musician, followed by stints as a graphic designer, magazine writer, blogger, photographer, and owner of an international adventure travel company. (I still do all of these things today.)

I’ve written two memoirs — Doofus Dad Does Everest Base Camp and Blow the Man Down — and live near Nashville with my wife, Holly, and our three children, Sam, Ava, and Pete.

Other Books

Blow the Man Down: How I navigated the sailboats and station wagons of the music business

In the 1970s, Mark Johnson was a gangly North Carolina farm boy with a big imagination. An avid reader of Doc Savage pulp novels and Hardy Boys mysteries, Johnson knew he wanted adventure in his life. He just had no idea where to get it or how to escape the Christmas tree fields of the Appalachians. As a teenager, Johnson discovered music. Then, girls. These epiphanies would lead to an adventure even Johnson’s wild imagination couldn’t have predicted.

Follow along as Johnson navigates a heart-pounding and often hilarious odyssey through the 1980s and ‘90s music industry as a songwriter and club musician, both in fickle Nashville and the mysterious Caribbean island of ill repute St. Croix. Johnson reveals both the seductions and the hard truths of life in the world of entertainment.

Doofus Dad Does Everest Base Camp: One of Planet Earth’s epic adventures told by a slightly-less-than-epic guy

Imagine setting off on a 12-day trek through the Himalayan wilderness to the foot of Mount Everest, experiencing the world’s most startling landscapes and vibrant Sherpa culture and struggling to catch your breath at nearly 18,000 feet above sea level – all without leaving your favorite listening chair.

Doofus Dad Does Everest Base Camp brings that scenario to life.

In April 2018, Johnson embarked on an epic, grueling, and often hilarious adventure – the 80-mile trek from Lukla, Nepal, to Mount Everest Base Camp – after launching an improbable trekking company a year earlier in the flatlands of the southeastern United States. As Johnson’s first excursion out of the continental US, this journey into the exotic country of Nepal was indeed a trial by fire (and ice).

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Mark’s writing style and descriptions of the people, places, and events is such that you finish a chapter, put the book down … and then pick it back up, further procrastinating whatever it was you were about to move onto.

Michael Strauss, Airline pilot, Himalayan trekker

Contact M. Ernest Johnson

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