The Second Shot

The riveting true story behind an unsanctioned rescue mission in the jungles of the Philippines, engineered by former Green Beret and unlikely American hero Gene Yu.

Evelyn Chang and her husband were vacationing in the Philippines when they were ambushed by terrorists. Evelyn’s husband was killed. She was kidnapped and disappeared into the lawless netherworld of the Sulu Archipelago. There was no hope of a rescue.

Former Green Beret Gene Yu was five years out of the military, unemployed, and struggling with his transition back to the real world when Evelyn’s family asked for help. His improbable mission: infiltrate one of the most dangerous corners of the world and get her back. Alone.

Mindful of “every young Asian kid in America struggling to fit into a dominant white culture,” Gene’s harrowing, self-deprecating, and provocative memoir is really the story of two rescues. One, a personal liberation and the discovery of self-identity beyond both literal and figurative battlefields. The other is set amid the excruciating ordeals of a jungle war zone, where an Asian American man, once self-described as “nobody squared,” defied all stereotypes and expectations to become a woman’s last hope of survival.

Gene Yu was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1979, and entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1997, where he majored in computer science and graduated top of his class. Gene served in Korea and Japan as a US Army Armor and Special Forces officer. He deployed for four combat tours in Iraq and the southern Philippines, and is a recipient of two Bronze Star Medals and the Combat Infantryman Badge. In 2015, Gene founded Blackpanda Group, a cybersecurity insurance and emergency response services company headquartered in Asia, and currently serves as the CEO. Gene is also an alumnus of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and Stanford Graduate School of Business.