Cry of the Panther Book

After Vietnam, with shrapnel in his back and the jungle in his brain, James McMullen got into his car and headed as far south as he could go--the Everglades--the one place in America most like Nam.

In the glades he became one of the "jungle vets," those who sought refuge by disappearing into America's hills and swamps. In Vietnam, McMullen had tracked and been tracked by other men. In the glades, he began to track the Florida panther. And as the "gentle embrace of the untamed" claimed him, he traded one obsession for another.

Saving the panther from extinction became his mission, and with it the realization that the cat was the symbol of his own self-spirit and his own endangered species.