Charlie's Ashes is a Greatest Generation story based in fact about five WWII veterans, ages 93 to 101 (Sam Lombardo, John Beard, Bill McCowen, Joe Gossen, and Charlie Geiger), members of a Destin, Florida, veterans group representing all the military services and known as the Crispy Warriors. Also featured in the story is an African American Vietnam War veteran (Tommy McCraney). A big deal in Destin, the Crispy Warriors meet weekly for breakfast at a Crackings restaurant. Two weeks before a Veterans Day "Red, White, and Blue Celebration" at HarborWalk Village, they learn that Charlie Geiger has just passed. Wrestling with what comes next, Sam Lombardo, challenges the other WWII veterans to meet him the next morning at 5:00 a.m. behind their assisted living facility.
Adams' other works include:
The Parting: A Story of West Point on the Eve of the Civil War
Eben Kruge: How "A Christmas Carol" Came to be Written
Sông Bé: A Legacy of Vietnam
The factual basis for Charlie's Ashes derives from the Adams' personal knowledge of the key characters, himself a Crispy Warrior, his research and experiences as the son of a career Army officer, the first of three brothers to graduate from West Point, a Vietnam War veteran, an Army aviator serving in the Middle East, a student of American history, as well as a civil/environmental engineer, adjunct professor at Southern Methodist University and the United States Military Academy, and founder of an international engineering company. Adams currently serves as the chief strategy officer for an innovative renewable "green" energy company, Ion Power Group LLC, writing historical fiction as time allows.
Born in 1945, a month after V-J Day, Adams has always seen himself as part of a generation that grew up in a time of great change and hope for a brighter and more equal world, those espousing racial equality and equality of sex being increasingly heard.
Relevant to the authenticity of the military and battle elements of the story and as well as American history, five months after graduating from West Point in June 1967, Adams was one of the first in his Class of 1967 to serve in the Vietnam War, assigned to the 1/506th Infantry Battalion, 101st Airborne Division of Band of Brothers fame.
