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. Paladin:  The Story of Augusta’s Fighter Ace is the first in Bowen’s Wars of Matt Tower adventure series and required significant historical research over several years, as did Bowen’s second novel in the series, Thorns in the Garden City.