[11] Howard completed two masters degrees while working as a teacher, raising her three sons, and gradually restoring the heritage home.
"[1] Howard's You'll Be Sorry: How World War II Changed Women's Lives (2016) is based largely on extracts from interviews, letters, and other recollections of 150 Australian women who served in the wartime auxiliary services, focusing on their experiences in assisting the military and their return to often "duller or frustrating lives" afterwards.
[3][12] The women worked as clerks, cryptographers, transport drivers, despatch riders, and at coastal artillery installations.
[2] In 2003, a review in The Journal of Australian Studies commended the way that Howard "skilfully outlines the precarious act faced by policy makers" in C'mon Over: Voluntary Child Migrants from Tilbury to Sydney.
[2] Noting that Howard, like Barnardo, "[eschews] statistics in favour of personal vignettes and concrete details" about the child migrants' experiences, the review stated that the "main complaint is simply that too little of each story is told", while acknowledging "the need to compress what is surely a staggering amount of research".
"[15] Environmental historian Paul Boon noted that "[Howard's] books collate an amusing collection of anecdotes and snippets of local history.