Bowers was raised in Johnson City, Tennessee, during the Great Depression and World War II era.
[1] During the 1960s, Bowers published numerous interviews and articles in major magazines, including The New York Times, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, New York, Cosmopolitan, and Harper's, some of which were collected in paperback under the title The Golden Bowers in the early 1970s.
A second novel of that period, Helene (1976), is a Lolita-like tale set in 1950s America with college-age males and a young teenage girl.
Probably inspired by his father, who was night manager at the local railroad station during John's childhood, this book is difficult to classify in any standard genre, and languished somewhat after its release because bookstores and libraries did not know quite what to do with it.
Turning his attention to historical examination of the Civil War, Bowers wrote Stonewall Jackson: Portrait of a Soldier (1990)[4] and Chickamauga and Chattanooga: The Battles That Doomed the Confederacy (2000),[5] which mix fact, fiction, and anecdotes.