Jim Rowell was drafted into the United States Army in 1968.  After Basic Training and Advanced Infantry Training he was deployed to Vietnam.  According to Jim Rowell, “I landed in Vietnam on a bright yellow and red Brannif jet airplane on July 21, 1968. My first impression? The 120 degree heat that knocked me off my feet and a song playing in the background on a loudspeaker”

After his military service, Jim Rowell commenced a 28 year law enforcement career with the DeKalb County Police Department (Georgia).  Suffering a heart attack in 1999, Jim Rowell retired from the DeKalb County Police Department Homicide Unit as a police captain.  Throughout his law enforcement career, Jim Rowell served in uniform and as a detective in burglary, youth, sex crimes and homicide.

After retiring, Jim renewed his efforts to publish a manuscript he had written ten years before for his two children. Calling his story Granny and the Eskimo; Angels in Vietnam; which “describes his journey through life from youth to Vietnam where he experienced what can only be described as a paranormal event involving his mother and grandmother the day he was wounded in an ambush. He also tells the reader about his friendship with his mentor on the battlefield, the Eskimo. It was the Eskimo's untimely death on a cold winter night in Anchorage, Alaska that prompted Jim to write his story.”

According to the book description of Granny and the Eskimo: Angels in Vietnam, “As Jim Rowell lay bleeding after an ambush in the jungles of Vietnam, his mother was watching the carnage unfold in a dream 12,000 miles away. What happened over the next few months convinced Jim he had angels protecting him.”

According to Jim Rowell, “If the title alone doesn't intrigue you, the content certainly will. Rowell has captured in Granny and The Eskimo a most extraordinary true story about family, friendship and a behind-the-scenes power that sometimes guides one's life in ways people could never imagine. An easy-to-read page-turner, the book is not a book about the Vietnam conflict, but rather an honest account about one man's emotional journey. That journey may have had its roots in Southeast Asia, but its path wound not just in geographic places like Vietnam and Alaska, but across spiritual areas that leads the reader to truly ponder fate, miracles or some sense of a guiding hand.”