A Memoir by Jeff Johnson
Leap
A Memoir of Leaving, Becoming, and Beginning Again
A memoir about leaving one life in search of another—and discovering that the past has a way of coming with you. Jeff left Lincoln, Nebraska, for Boston believing there was something in him he had not yet reached, and that he might have to leave home to find it. Leap traces the life that shaped that decision and everything that followed—from adoption and growing up in Lincoln to love, grief, belonging, self-reliance, and the long work of building a life that feels true from the inside.
Available now in print and Kindle. Audiobook narrated by Matt Siewert, coming October 2026.
The Book
What if the life you spent decades building was also the life you eventually had to learn how to leave?
Leap is a memoir about the choices—large and small—that shape a life.
Beginning in Lincoln, Nebraska, Jeff Johnson traces a childhood marked by adoption, family upheaval, friendship, first love, and early loss; the decision to leave for Boston and build a life of his own; the relationships, work, homes, and people that became his definition of belonging; and the long period in which alcohol gradually changed from relief into confinement.
But Leap is not simply a memoir about addiction or recovery. It is about self-reliance and the limits of self-reliance. It is about grief, friendship, family, identity, work, money, home, aging, humor, shame, and the strange ways ordinary moments acquire meaning only after enough time has passed.
It is also about beginning again.
After years of trying to manage everything himself, Jeff finally reaches the point where surviving alone is no longer enough. Sobriety does not give him a perfect ending. It gives him something more useful: clarity, connection, and the chance to build an ordinary life he actually wants to protect.
Intimate, unsentimental, reflective, and often darkly funny, Leap asks what it means to leave before certainty arrives—and whether becoming yourself may require more than one leap.
I used to believe the important part of a leap was the distance traveled.
The important part is the decision to leave the ground.