Fascinating, hilarious, terrifying, wondrous, and enlightening-sometimes all at once. I couldn't put it down, and when I got to the end I only wished there were more.
~ John Bodle, fmr. USAF (JAG)
THE HERO Versus Me & Monkey Jo chronicles the adventures of Henry Neis who arrives in Vietnam an innocent youth from Kansas, and quickly falls in with addicts and lost souls. Shepard's prose pulls us into the "scene" immediately, and propels us on a journey that is at times exhilarating, shocking, and moving. A rollicking read and an eye-opening look at the Vietnam War.
Henry Neis (pronounced "nice"), fresh out of high school from Kansas, is drafted and sent to Vietnam. Trained as a helicopter mechanic, he is instead assigned to a personnel unit, a fitting introduction to the insanity of this war that makes no sense to him.
Henry falls in with the company misfits and drug users, becoming an addict and dealer himself, yet his fundamental innocence shines through to the final page.
While on a dangerous mission, Harry rescues a baby monkey, who becomes his faithful companion. Henry volunteers to leave the relative safety of his camp and travel from DaNang to the DMZ on a mission to get active-duty soldiers to put their signatures on insurance paperwork required by the US military. Many of the soldiers had left their Notification of Next of Kin forms blank; some put Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh down as their beneficiaries. Military command insisted on getting the proper names of their next of kin, given their likelihood of dying in battle, and it is Henry's job to find them.
Henry and Monkey Jo travel gathering stories and dispensing drugs. They interact with hooch-maids, waitresses, drug dealers, remnants of the French colonizers, the Viet Cong "Hells Angels," and the North Vietnamese Regular Army. Along the way Henry records the stories of fellow GI's and works to supply what he feels his fellow soldiers need to survive in the surreal environment during the Vietnam War - including their next fix. Fiction that feels like memoir.
Perry L. Shepard is a Vietnam veteran who has written two novels: The Hero versus Me and Monkey Jo, and Hard Love. He co-wrote two plays in the anthology titled Annabelle. He won a second place award in the Eber and Wein's Best American Poetry of 2013, an honorable mention in Writer's Digest' 84th annual Poetry Competition. He has been published in newspapers, college poetry collections and fanzines. Perry was a board member on a Community Radio Station in Salt Lake City (KRCL), a radio music programmer, and one of the founders of the Utah Music Association. He was the Mayor and President of Harveysburg Village Council in Harveysburg, Ohio. He owned and operated the Painted Word Emporium in SLC, Utah-a restaurant, art and performance space. He drove trucks, and shrimp fished out of Arransas Pass, Texas. He served as a board member of (SMAG) South Mass Art Guild in Lawrence Kansas, and is currently the Vice President of the Kansas Author's Club District No. 2. He has also worked with youth in crisis for the past 29 years. You can reach Perry at: www.perryshepard.com
