Memoir of Wartime Loss Re-Titled
When Karen Spears Zacharias’s memoir about, as the subtitle put it, “the father she lost in Vietnam and the mother who held her family together” comes out in paperback next month, it’ll have a substantial name change. Published in hardcover as Hero Mama, the book is now called After the Flag Has Been Folded, and the subtitle now indicates that her father was “lost to war.” Usually, a major title change between hardcover and paperback release is an attempt to revitalize a moribund title, but Zacharias had no shortage of praise for her story, including recognition from Borders’ Original Voice program. So why the switch?
As the new cover shows, the name change reflects the broader resonances Zacharias discovered in her personal saga in her encounters with other families who have lost loved ones to combat in Afghanistan and Iraq last year. “These women hunted me down at book signings, military bases, university lectures, through fellow journalists, and aging veterans,” she writes. “They all want to know how my mama did it; how she managed to raise three children without her soulmate. They ask if Mama’s happy now, and will they ever be again? It’s painfully clear that this is no longer solely our family’s story, if it ever was, but a nation’s story.”
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