By KELCY DOLAN

“I don’t golf or bowl, but I have been lucky enough to find good stories and my job as a writer is to not bumble that story up,” says local author Les Rolston.

His latest story though, A Pea Coat Goes Home, is his own.

Rolston’s previous works focus primarily on American soldiers throughout history. Using available records, diaries and other primary sources he crafts their stories. His first book, Lost Soul, followed his efforts to preserve the unmarked grave of a Confederate soldier.

He had been writing about his experiences and the soldier’s history for magazines and other publications, which eventually came together to create his first book.

Another one of his books, Long Time Gone: Neighbors Divided by Civil War, is about two boys from Rhode Island. They were friends in youth, but fought on opposite sides of the Civil War.

A Pea Coat Goes Home focuses on the relationship between Rolston and his father through a military jacket that they both owned.

After turning 60, Rolston said he began looking at his possessions differently, whether or not he would truly ever use certain things again. He was reevaluating their worth when he found the military pea coat he had inherited from his father.

“You see what you want to throw away, what you want to hand down and what’s a legacy. That coat is a legacy,” he said.

He wanted this jacket to be appreciated in the same way he had appreciated it all his life.

Rolston found that the ship his father had served on, the U.S.S. Lexington, had been made into a floating museum in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The Museum on the Bay had plenty of pea coats, but none of them had been identified, so they were ecstatic to hear about the pristine jacket.

Rolston mailed them the coat, but immediately felt an “emptiness” having given away the only memento, only physical connection, he still had with his father. For the next year and a half he would write memories and anecdotes from his and his father’s relationship, the military pea coat a catalyst.

A Pea Coat Goes Home is a “children’s book for adults,” according to Rolston. The 58-page lighthearted story has a “goodness and warmth” to it.

Rolston hopes his latest book will help people reevaluate their own connections with family, especially “Baby Boomers; we all had a father in World War II.”

According to Rolston, those who have read the manuscript have been moved by the story, and a few have even been brought to tears.

Now that the book is finished, Rolston would like to make a trip to Corpus Christi to see the floating museum and the ship his father served on and hopefully be able to see his old jacket again.

“I wish my dad could have seen it,” Rolston said.

Rolston is a building inspector for the city of Warwick. Under his supervision he has worked hard to preserve historic cemeteries and buildings and has been crucial in finding and preserving the gravesites of soldiers. He was born in Providence, but grew up in Warwick, attending Warwick Veterans Memorial High School.

The book will be released officially on July 30 and available for purchase as a hard copy, e-book and audiobook through the publisher, Revival Waves of Glory Publishing, or Amazon.com.