As a youngster, author Charles W. Bowen of Augusta, Georgia, USA, spent much of his time tuned to developing news from the front lines of World War II. He listened to radio when newscasts covered the war. He read Augusta’s daily newspapers, regularly questioning his parents and people involved in the city’s Civil Defense. Bowen recalls vividly the air-raid drills, gun emplacements around airfields and public facilities, and bombing practice over the city at night with searchlights scanning the sky. It was Augusta’s two pilot training airfields that fueled the author’s love for aviation and led him to obtain a pilot’s license. Mental and written notes of the era serve him to this day.

Bowen is a frequent writer and speaker on events of World War II and Augusta’s 1940s-1970s struggles to escape decades of political and law-enforcement corruption. He attended public schools in Richmond County and graduated from Academy of Richmond County as an ROTC lieutenant. University of Georgia studies contributed to a bachelor’s degree in economics with a minor in journalism from Augusta College.

After college, Bowen joined the family retail and wholesale business, serving in various management areas over the years. He expanded into real estate and commercial investments in partnership with George Bowen, his brother and best friend.

A family man since he married high school sweetheart Barbara Pruitt in 1958, the author has lived in Augusta his entire life. His extended family includes a daughter, son, three granddaughters, a great-grandson and two great-granddaughters — all in the Augusta area. Having served as deacon, elder and Sunday School teacher, Bowen was instrumental in the 2004 founding of Christ Church Presbyterian in Evans, Georgia, an Augusta suburb. He believes salvation is by faith in Christ.

Paladin: The Story of Augusta’s Fighter Ace — The Wars of Matt Tower, Book 1 is the author’s first novel and required significant historical research over many years. Bowen is nearing completion of a second novel in the Matt Tower series, Thorns in the Garden City, about political, law enforcement and economic corruption in post-World War II Augusta. It concludes the story begun in Paladin. His third novel, also in the works, takes a closer look at the efforts of men and women who did what the times required in wartime Germany and England.