3. What do we learn about Perry in Persons Unknown?

In Persons Unknown, Perry comes across a letter written by his father on his behalf while at the Kansas State Penitentiary, detailing the events of Perry’s early life. As one of four children born to the Western rodeo duo of Tex John Smith and Florence Buckskin, Perry lived an impoverished and itinerant childhood until his parents’ separation when Perry was six years old. After living for a short while with his alcoholic mother, Perry was sent to a Catholic orphanage, where nuns routinely abused him for wetting the bed. After he contracted pneumonia from this and other forms of neglect, his father took him away to live in Alaska, where he learned to hunt and track, and to search for gold in nearby streams.

As a young man, Perry enlisted in the Merchant Marine and, subsequently, the Army. After several tours of duty, followed by a motorcycle accident that left him badly injured and immobile for six months, he rejoined his father in Alaska. Together they built a hunting lodge which, after all their labor, failed to attract clientele, and after a row with Tex John, Perry departed Alaska again, this time for good. He was subsequently arrested for robbery, which is how he came to be in the Kansas State Penitentiary.