an irreverent memoir about death, childhood, and growing up

Available from Behler Publications, March 2008

Ever since I’ve known Howard, he’s been dead.

Author, Patricia Kambitsch, tells how her father’s untimely death spurred a lifetime of storytelling. However dead he may be, Howard, the mild-mannered, über-geek hero, thrives through the collective memories and imagination of his widow and six children.

Questions of what really happened to her father give way to fantasy suspicions that include the questionable next-door neighbor who was last seen with her father, secret government projects, and alien abduction. Truer tales range from imaginative family antics at graveside, to bullying in the bathtub, to playing Jesus on the sidewalk. In the end, answers to the questions become less important than truths revealed through the re-creation of the past through shared memories.