After The Flag Has Been Folded: A Daughter Remembers The Father She Lost To War, And The Mother Who Held Her Family Together

(Paperback)

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Karen Spears was nine years old, living with her family in a trailer in rural Tennessee, when her father, David Spears, was killed in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam. It was 1966in a nation being torn apart by a war nobody wanted, in an emotionally charged Southern landscape stained with racism and bigotryand suddenly the care and well-being of three small children were solely in the hands of a frightened young widow with no skills and a ninth-grade education. But thanks to a mother's remarkable courage, strength, and stubborn tenacity, a family in the midst of chaos and in severe crisis miraculously pulled together to achieve its own version of the American Dream.

Beginning on the day Karen learns of her father's death and ending thirty years later with her pilgrimage to the battlefield where he died, half a world away from the family's hometown, After the Flag Has Been Folded is a triumphant tale of reconciliation between a daughter and her father, a daughter and her nationand a poignant remembrance of a mother's love and heroism.

Reviews

"Bittersweet" -- The Oregonian (Portland)

"Karen Spears Zacharias has written a dead-honest, raw-edged memoir . . . wonderfully told" -- Joseph L. Galloway, co-author of the New York Times bestseller WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...AND YOUNG

"One of the most original, heartbreaking and off-the-nose books about the Vietnam experience ever written . . . brilliant" -- Pat Conroy

"A beautiful and important book . . . Hero Mama will stay with me always." -- Silas House, Author of Clay's Quilt and The Coal Tatoo

"Touch[es] the hearts of families who have dealt with death, even if the death wasn't caused by war." -- Las Vegas Review-Journal

"An important and triumphant work of literature, a must read for every American in another time of war." -- Military.com

Author Bio

Karen Spears Zacharias''s work has won dozens of writing awards. She has lectured at numerous Vietnam veterans'' events; serves on the national advisory board of the Virtual Wall and the Orphans of War Foundation; is a contributing columnist for The Veteran, the magazine for the Vietnam Veterans of America; and is a member of Sons and Daughters in Touch, a national organization for adult children of servicemen killed in Vietnam. She lives in Oregon and Georgia.