Warflower: A True Story of Family, Service, and Life in Alaska, (Hardcover)

Bob Stark had no plans after high school. With his brother locked away in the only maximum-security prison in Alaska, his mom working overtime at the local grocery store, and his bad habits getting worse, he saw no hope for the future. Until the Army recruiter came to school offering an escape. Bob envisioned romantic adventures in Italy, life-saving missions in Africa, and friendships built on tough times - he wanted to be an honorable, dependable, and brave man - all of the things he was not. He signed the papers, and five days after graduation was sent out.

After basic training and airborne school, Bob is stationed in Italy where his eighteen-year-old dreams of travel and romance are cut short when his unit is ordered to parachute into Northern Iraq. He spends the next year in Iraq learning more than he could have ever imagined.

Four and a half years later, after two deployments and a long list of life lessons, Bob leaves Fort Campbell, Kentucky on a road trip west with the hopes of falling in love with the country he fought for. Along the way, he reunites with family and friends - from his happy-go-lucky mother in Arizona who talks to her incarcerated husband on the phone whenever she is not at work, to his foul-mouthed grandmother in Idaho who wears one glove and drinks beer with ice all day long, until finally reuniting with his high school sweetheart in Las Vegas - Bob begins a new chapter of self-discovery and acceptance that just may allow him to be the man he always wanted to be. Warflower is a coming-of-age story about family traditions, brotherhood, and one boy's journey into manhood without a father to teach him.