When Judy Howard loses her husband, Jack of twenty-five years, grief becomes an unwanted shadow she can’t outrun. So, she does the only brave thing that makes sense; she fires up her Winnebago and heads across the country on historic Rt 66 with her cat, Sportster, and a life-sized Harley Biker doll she calls Jack Incarnate, along for company while she faces her past. From California’s Pacific coast to Florida’s Atlantic shores, Judy revisits the tangled love, the hard truths, and the unbreakable bond that shaped her marriage. Mile by mile, she begins piecing together the woman who exists beyond the roles she once filled. But when Jack Incarnate becomes a haunting —both literally and emotionally—by the man she loved fiercely and sometimes fearfully, Judy’s journey, which began as an escape, becomes a reckoning, a healing, and ultimately a homecoming to herself. Funny, touching, and wonderfully odd in all the right ways, Coast to Coast with a Cat and a Ghost is a road-trip memoir that proves you can grieve, laugh, love, run away, and find yourself—all at the same time. Raw, real, and surprisingly funny, Coast to Coast with a Cat and a Ghost is a story of courage, reinvention, and the magic that happens when a woman decides to claim her next chapter. A touching, poignant, and empowering journey of discovery-and self-discovery, Howard's debut is full of surprises and universal truths. From a sobering accounting of death to the fear and unsettling circumstance of leaving everything familiar behind to the challenge of crossing Lake Pontchartrain, dealing with the spirit of Jack, and seeing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, this middle-aged bildungsroman clarifies for Howard her life's path. In the end she comes to terms with her deep love for Jack despite the abuse that was a part of their relationship, emerging stronger and well-defined. Weaving an emotionally charged narrative with humorous anecdotes and a unique perspective on life, Howard's odyssey is full of heart and a budding fearlessness. Powerfully written and eloquently understated, Coast to Coast with a Cat and a Ghost is the most surprising and satisfying memoir in recent memory. Judy Howard started grooming dogs in her parents' basement at the age of eleven and has continued that work ever since. She was inspired after the death of her husband to pursue writing, something she had always wanted to try. Coast to Coast with a Cat and a Ghost is her first novel. Howard resides in Sun City, California.