Henrietta's Life, Matthew Simulator Guru starts with a business whose communication software updates send their system into a catatonic state. Every update required band aid fixes. Never complete, essential data missing and required their IT Department to write patches to make it work. One of their field representatives suggested his son in law and said he may not have the blessing of a university but he had been a miracle worker as a contractor at several aerospace companies. They tried him as a contractor and in a week he had the software humming. They hired him and moved him and his family to Iowa and they bought a small ranchette. His daughters bought a Horse named Sparkle and a Holstein calf they named Henrietta. The son named Matthew, already out of the house, took a job with a small video game developer in Tampa, Florida and on day two disagreed with the boss, an eccentric software genius, who had built the company from scratch. Matthew rose through the ranks and became a partner and co-owner. All the other engineers were yes men, even the women. The owner knew Matthew would keep him from falling on his sword. Then Matthew developed a billion-dollar idea, the boss said it would cost millions to build but 'let's build it'. A Navy F/A-18 pilot tried the air combat part of the game and loved it, told his Admiral and the Navy wanted the game builder to build them a stand-alone simulator out of the air combat part. The story tracks the family development through Matthew's successes, his two sisters' pathways through college, veterinarian school, marriages, and their own families.

E.H. Lester writes fiction shaped by lived experience. He served 11 years in the USAF as part of the Strategic Air Command, then worked at Boeing Military Aircraft and later in industry before spending 25 years as a long-haul trucker. Now retired, he lives in Decatur, Alabama, where he continues to write stories grounded in the people and places that shaped him.