The Audacity To Persevere

By Charles Williams

I’m a high school dropout. I never made it past the ninth grade. The reason why is complicated and will be explored throughout the telling of my story of perseverance. When I was fifteen years old, I dropped out of high school. At that time, I had only earned one-half of gym credit.

My life’s story of is a journey of survival, resilience, and redemption. It’s a testimony that your beginning doesn’t have to set the tone for your entire life. At the writing of this book, I am a newly retired sixty-five-year-old Salvation Army officer and an ordained elder. As an adult at age thirty, I earned my GED. Many years later, I earned my bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, and doctorate and became a board-certified chaplain.

It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t come without sacrifice. I had to take several prep classes to prepare for the GED test. Later, to get into college, I took several years of non-credited classes. During college, I struggled because I wasn’t a good speller. I couldn’t take notes. Plus dealing with a lower self-image and racism while growing up didn’t help. In addition, having a young wife, three children, school full-time, full-time work, and running my own carpet and upholstery cleaning service, added additional pressure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jul 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636304243

Charles Williams

Charles Williams (1909–1975) was one of the preeminent authors of American crime fiction. Born in Texas, he dropped out of high school to enlist in the US Merchant Marine, serving for ten years before leaving to work in the electronics industry. At the end of World War II, Williams began writing fiction while living in San Francisco. The success of his backwoods noir Hill Girl (1951) allowed him to quit his job and write fulltime. Williams’s clean and somewhat casual narrative style distinguishes his novels—which range from hard-boiled, small-town noir to suspense thrillers set at sea and in the Deep South. Although originally published by pulp fiction houses, his work won great critical acclaim, with Hell Hath No Fury (1953) becoming the first paperback original to be reviewed by legendary New York Times critic Anthony Boucher. Many of his novels were adapted for the screen, such as Dead Calm (published in 1963) and Don’t Just Stand There! (published in 1966), for which Williams wrote the screenplay. Williams died in California in 1975.