Haunted by childhood traumas, happily married Katy Welborn is at a crossroads: in her late 30s, her biological clock ticking, she has survived cancer but her fears of family skeletons dangling in the genetic closet have paralyzed her from becoming pregnant. That's when her long-departed Grandmother Nellie appears as sort of a guardian angel, leading Katy on a journey back through the tortured pages of her past. With unexpected humor and often profound insights, Katy revisits a series of traumatic encounters: a severely schizophrenic uncle whose presence threatens the entire family, an emotionally unstable sister who has spiraled into the lost zone of southern California's 1960s drug-infused counterculture; and a well-meaning suburban family torn apart by its own bizarre eccentricities. Set in the 1990s, with flashbacks to the 1950s and 1960s, Katy's Ghost takes readers into painful territory, captured with a soft soul.