The remarkable tale of Herman Perry, a native of North Carolina who wound up going native in the Indo-Burmese jungle. Perry was shipped in a segregated labor battalion to South Asia in 1943, one of thousands of black soldiers dispatched to build the Ledo Road, from the mountains of northeast India across the tiger-infested vales of Burma. Perry could not endure the jungle's brutality, nor the racism of his white officers. Finally, in emotional collapse, he shot a white lieutenant. So began Perry's flight through one of the planet's most hostile realms. He eventually stumbled upon a village festooned with polished human skulls, where, amid a tribe of elaborately tattooed headhunters, he would find bliss--and would marry the chief 's fourteen-year-old daughter. Author Koerner spent nearly five years chasing Perry's ghost through the remotest corners of India and Burma, and uncovering the forgotten story of the Ledo Road's black G.I.s.--From publisher description.