Charles Reis Felix (1923-2017) was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, one of four children to Portuguese immigrant parents. He attended local public schools and graduated from New Bedford High in 1941. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1941-43, at which time he was drafted into the U.S. Army. After the war he received a B.A. in history from Stanford University, and became an elementary school teacher. He is married, with two grown children, and lives with his wife Barbara in a cabin among the redwoods of Northern California.
His first published book, Crossing the Sauer (Burford Books), an account of his experience as a combat infantryman in WWII, was hailed by Paul Fussell, author of The Great War and Modern Memory, as ""one of the most honest, unforgettable memoirs of the war I've read."" Felix published Through a Portagee Gate (U Massachusetts Dartmouth), a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author's father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915.
