A novel by Kerry Gyekis

A novel about changes in people who have lived much of their lives and then find other things important enough to change those lives drastically... also a story of catastrophic transformation in the Russia of today.

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The price of TROPHIES is $10.50 plus postage.

The germ of the idea for this story came from a friend who journeyed to Kamchatka, Siberia several years ago to hunt the brown bear. Once there he was swindled out of his money and was lucky to get out with his life. He shot no bear.

This novel, Trophies, is about a Vietnam vet in his fifties who has lived to hunt most of his life, but is beginning to doubt his need to kill and hang animals on his walls. In this trip to Russia, he sees a chance to test this change with a chance to kill the greatest trophy, the brown bear.

Once there he becomes embroiled in a society that is undergoing catastrophic changes. He meets a Russian guide who is a former Spetsnaz officer and closely parallels his own military experiences, but in Afghanistan, Russia's Vietnam. All through the hunt these two alternately clash and come closer to each other until an event, which demonstrates that both have changed. The American makes the break with his known life in the U.S. and flies with the Russian to a Siberian Tiger Project outpost across the Sea of Okhotsk. There he meets the guide's older sister who is working within the tiger program. He becomes further involved with the Russian Environmental Movement as they attempt to stop the decimation of the tiger and its habitat in Siberia as his interests now broaden to a love for the sister of his friend. In the end, they are able to affect changes in the Russia of today that they would not have imagined were possible.

Kerry Gyekis has been a professional forester most of his adult life. His career began in the jungles of South Asia in the sixties conducting a jungle-timber resources survey for the Malaysian Government. During this time he traveled through Cambodia while the United States Government was bombing its eastern boundaries. He was able to enter Vietnam and travel throughout the delta during the American build-up there in the mid-sixties.

Over the years Kerry and his sons and wife have sea kayaked in many places around the world including the northwest coast of Norway. He has written articles about those trips.

He received his B.S. in Forest Management from West Virginia University in 1965. Mr. Gyekis presently lives with his wife of thirty-three years in the middle of his own forest in the north central mountains of Pennsylvania in a home that he and his family built of their own logs and stones. This is his first novel.