What if the greatest victories of World War II were shaped not only on the battlefield... but behind closed doors, in whispered meetings, in risks no history book ever recorded?
In Ike and Charlie: What You Don't Know About Ike and WWII, acclaimed storyteller David R. Pickett takes readers into the rooms where decisions were made, where strategy was neither clean nor ceremonial, and where desperation forced men of conscience into impossible choices.
The novel grows out of a deeply personal connection: Pickett's father, Captain (OSS) Charles Lewis Pickett III, served as an aide to Eisenhower and later to General Somervell. History records the generals. It rarely records the men who moved quietly between them, making history.
Through the character of Charlie Robertson - his father rendered in plausible fiction based on historical events - Pickett follows a man navigating the unfinished corridors of the Pentagon, Mafia-controlled union strikes choking off war production, and the high-stakes chess match of Atlantic losses and strategic bombing failures. With carte blanche from Eisenhower, Marshall, and even FDR, Charlie cuts through bureaucracy, ego, and corruption. He does what others will not. He goes where others cannot.
He pulls back the curtain and breaths live into this is plausible history, fact woven tightly with fiction to illuminate what may have happened behind the curtain of the "unexplainable successes" that led to Germany's surrender.
Readers sit in the cockpit of a B-17 crossing the North Atlantic. They feel the tension of negotiations with men who answer to the Mafia. They watch as strategy becomes survival.
Desperation tests morality. War tests faith. Leadership tests the soul.
In the end, Ike and Charlie is a tribute, to those who served, to those who endured, and to the unseen hands that helped shape victory.
He is Risen indeed. Tetelestai.
About the Author
David Pickett is a serial inventor, author, and technology entrepreneur with a distinguished career in high-tech electronics and innovation. Described by NASA's Chuck Story as a "renaissance man" and polymath, David holds numerous patents and has been a key contributor to DARPA and Department of Defense initiatives.
A graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington, where he also taught physics, David's professional journey includes leadership roles in the turnaround of DSC and in the founding of Flextronics operations in both Palo Alto and Texas. He is the founder of IceCOLD® Technologies, LLC?whose refrigerant catalyst earned the UpTime Institute's Green Enterprise Award?and remains active in multiple technology and research ventures.
David has published eleven books and continues to write, invent, and mentor. An Elder at First Presbyterian Church in Plano, Texas, he also serves on the Board of Bob C. Ross Ministries and as Chairman of Peru Ministries.
He and his wife Ginger, married for over five decades, live in Plano, Texas. They have two daughters and three grandchildren in Colorado. David enjoys cycling, skiing, flying, hiking, Bible study, ministry work, and spending time with his family.
