<p>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 1966 -- in a nation being torn apart by a war nobody wanted, in an emotionally charged Southern landscape stained with racism and bigotry -- and 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.</p> <p>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, <i>After the Flag Has Been Folded</i> is a triumphant tale of reconciliation between a daughter and her father, a daughter and her nation -- and a poignant remembrance of a mother's love and heroism.</p>