The Range does not have many details, but we learned this morning that author and journalist Charles Bowden passed away yesterday at his home in Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Bowden had been feeling poorly in recent weeks and had been visiting doctors, who were trying to get to the bottom of what ailed him, according to Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll, a good friend of Bowden.
Bowden laid down for a nap and passed in his sleep, according to Carroll.
He was 69.
Bowden, a onetime Tucson Citizen reporter, was a hard-edged author whose first books pioneered a sort of environmental noir style but in recent years, he had focused on the dark underbelly of the drug war.
We’d say RIP, but we have a a feeling that wherever Chuck is, he’s already raising hell.
More details to follow as we get them.
This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 3, 2014.
An iconoclast and insightful author who told it like it is… He will be missed.
Was just thinking of him. Rest in peace old friend.
I was fortunate that I got to hear him speak a few times, and I chatted with him after the meetings. I enjoyed his books so much. He truly was a rare talent.
R.S.H. Chuck
Very sad news. My late husband worked for Chuck at City Magazine. Those were good times. I will miss you as will so many others. Rest in Peace.
Ol’ Chuckie was a one-off. Nobody like him out there nowadays. A good man whose only fault was that perhaps he cared or felt too much. Passages from “Blood Orchid” still haunt me after all these years.
There are people who can’t be replaced. He loved and understood this part of the world as well or better than anyone else. And he could explain it to others better than anyone else.
One of Chuck’s expressions when in conversation was “Ya hear me?”
We did Brother. R.I.P.
Personally, I think He’s earned the Great Post Deadline Drink in the Sky … (on the porch with a monsoon falling).
I am mesmerized with Bowden’s books – except Murder City and the like, which situations are too lurid and gruesome for me to handle. Since he left us, I realized he was the number one author in my world – because of the Sonora Desert area he wrote about, his invariably original poignant metaphors, his detailed sojourns with nature, and his naked truth. Several times I thought of trying to contact him, but I was stymied by wondering what meaningful thing I could say to such a person. I salute him.