Going Home with a Cat and a Ghost (Paperback or Softback)

After fleeing her Illinois home town forty years ago, Judy Howard is traveling home. When Brad, her first love invited her to their 40th high school reunion, she decided it was finally time to confront the question What if? that has haunted her for the last four decades.

Widowed and restless, Judy brings along her loyal cat, Sportster, and a life-sized polyester doll she calls Cowboy Jack who will ride shotgun. Although haunted by the trauma she buried at sixteen as she drives her Winnebago along Route 66, Judy is determined to face the ghosts she left behind: the rape she cannot remember, the illegal abortion she cannot forget, and Brad, the boy she once loved with her whole heart.

Brad, her former "James Dean" bad-boy boyfriend, is now a hardened detective. Who carries regrets that are as sharp as ever as he chases down Pit Bull, the most dangerous drug lord in the Midwest. But his biggest regret is named Judy.

As Detective Brad closes in on the ruthless Pit Bull, and as Judy nears Springfield and her reunion, the two past lovers are both unknowingly heading for a violent collision of the past and the present -forcing them to fight not only for answers, but for their second chance at love ... and their lives.

A gripping blend of women's fiction, emotional healing, and romantic suspense, Going Home with a Cat and a Ghost is a powerful journey of courage, closure, and the roads that lead us back to ourselves.

In Judy Howard's real life, the death of her husband gave the soon to be author a wakeup call, reminding her that life is short. After discovering her gift for writing, Howard sold her pet grooming business, which she had operated since the age of Elves, and engaged full throttle into her new passions of writing and traveling.Today, Judy Howard's writing career expands across many genres, including memoir, romantic mystery, reality fiction, travel, and young adult, but the theme is always the same - overcoming life's difficulties. The author's cat, Sportster, accompanies the author in their Winnebago motorhome as she travels across the country writing, lecturing, and presenting seminars.Missing the excitement of working at the pet salon, Sportster has pounced onto his own new career as a talented ghostwriter with his first book, ACTIVATE LION MODE. He is busy scratching out the second book in his Feline Fury Series. When Judy and Sportster are not traveling, they reside on the Pacific coast in Brookings, Oregon.