Chuck’s mom encouraged him to read and draw and hoped he'd become an artist. In 1950-51 she enrolled him as a 3rd grade cadet at Georgia MilitaryAcademy in College Park, Georgia. Memories from GMA include one 8-year-old classmate crying himself to sleep when his dad was killed in Korea. He also recalls teaching himself to draw copying Joe and Willie out of Bill Mauldin's classic book of WW II cartoons, Up Front. 

Chuck, age 8, Georgia Military Academy, 
College Park, GA, 1950


 Chuck’s mother decided to move from Michigan to Arizona in July, 1953. Driving during a  rainstorm near Marion, Kentucky, the car swerved on slick pavement, went off the road and  hit a guardrail next to a swamp. The backseat was stacked with heavy boxes of    Encyclopedias  and Logan's Junior Classics. The books drove the seats forward. Logan's mom  hit the  steering  column with great force and was killed. He was catapulted through the  windshield into the  muddy water where he fortunately landed on his back. Battered from  the impact, choking on his  blood and unable to move, he survived by regulating his  breathing to remain  afloat until help  arrived. Logan carries the crude tattoo — 777 — on  his left forearm as a reminder of that  night; July, 7th, 7:00 pm.

 Chuck spent 3 years living with an aunt and uncle in  Inspiration, Bowie and Superior, Arizona. Then he was shifted to another aunt for high  school  in Warren, Michigan, a blue-collar suburb of Detroit. It was the first time he'd  ever spent  more than one year in the same school. He was not allowed to play sports  because  athletic  ability had been his dad's downfall. Obedient to his guardian's wishes,  he  attended her non-  denominational, fundamentalist church four times a week for four  years.  The night he turned  18, he walked.

 Chuck attended Monteith College, part of Wayne State University in Detroit. Monteith  offered  an experimental curriculum funded by the Ford Foundation whose mission was to  expose a random  sample of Michigan students to a highly accelerated liberal arts  program. Wayne State had a  nationally ranked debate squad and fencing team. Logan was  kicked off both of them for  drinking.

 He then self-matriculated into Detroit's auto factories, police rosters and bars until he  volunteered for the draft in 1967. (Ethical dilemma: against the war, didn't want someone  else going in his place.)

In 1968, he volunteered for the paratroops, a sure ticket to Vietnam, and served 13 months carrying the radio for several small advisory teams, mainly in Dong Ha District in northern Quang Tri Province.

He earned a Combat Infantry Badge and a Bronze Star with V device.

In 1969, Chuck migrated to Minnesota where he drew cartoons in the antiwar vets movement and finally sobered up. In  1975  he was hired as a staff artist at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In 1985 he started  writing.  His Detroit novel and his Vietnam novel didn't sell. His hunting buddy John Camp  (Sandford),  a reporter in the St. Paul newsroom whose crime novels (written under the name  John Sandford)  were taking up permanent residence on the best seller list, suggested  that Logan back off the  ponderous literary stuff and write a thriller.

 Logan published his first book, Hunter's Moon in 1996. He hasn't had a drink in 37 years,  is  married (for the third time; he has a son in Michigan from a previous marriage) and  lives  with his wife and daughter in Stillwater, Minnesota. His first four novels received  consecutive starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, which also called his novel, After the  Rain -- the fifth featuring protagonist Phil Broker — "An unbeatable combination: a smart,  well-honed plot, fascinating characters and a writer with an original voice and the prose  skills to tie it all together."