About
Carlos "Charlie" Cruz was born in Brooklyn, New York, the first American-born son of Puerto Rican parents. He grew up between the streets of Williamsburg and the chain-link fences of Brentwood, Long Island, before his family moved to Fajardo, Puerto Rico when he was sixteen. He spent twenty years as a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses — building an identity from nothing, teaching himself Spanish in a bathroom, walking nine miles each way to a Kingdom Hall with no food and no money — before divorce led to disfellowship and the beginning of a decades-long battle with depression and undiagnosed C-PTSD.
Today he is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Shingo-trained operational engineer who has worked with Fortune 500 companies. He lives in Florida with his wife Lesbia. CHARLIE: The Story of Rising is his first book. A prequel — The Jesters — is in development.
Featured Work
Charlie - The Story of Rising
CHARLIE is a lyric memoir about what C-PTSD actually feels like from the inside across sixty years — and about what it finally takes to stop surviving and begin living. It is not a day-by-day account of a life. It is a precise account of what shaped one.
