The Work
Anyone can pull records from the National Archives. What I do is not just records retrieval, it is full-scale reconstruction and a methodology built over a decade of research, relationship, and devotion to the archive.
I go into the documents, the morning reports, the casualty files, the OMPF, the letters, the photographs, the unit histories and I find what the documents cannot say directly. The frequency underneath the fact. The human being the archive could not fully hold. I reconstruct psychological interiority from evidence. I follow the rupture. I stay inside the difficulty until the story breathes again.
This is not genealogy or a database search. It is archival biography at the highest level of rigor and the deepest level of human truth and requires a particular kind of devotion that cannot be systemized or rushed.
If you are looking for a quick turnaround on a name and a date, I am not your researcher.
If you are looking for someone to take a life, or a collection of lives, and return them to their full weight on the page, you have found her.
The archive holds the fact.
I find the human inside it.
Narrative Wartime Biography
Full-scale reconstruction of a military, Holocaust survivor, or civilian's war and its aftermath. I pull every available primary source across American and European archives, reconcile contradictions, and build a complete narrative that honors the documentary record and the human inside it. Work at this level is substantial, long-arc, and treated with the seriousness it deserves.
Documentary & Film Research Consulting
I work with filmmakers and production teams who need a researcher who understands not just the historical record but the human story inside it. I know how to find what standard sources miss, and translate archival complexity into narrative clarity without losing the truth.
Ghostwriting & Manuscript Development
I work with authors, families, and institutions to undertake research and develop it into publishable narrative. This includes full ghostwriting, developmental editing, fact-checking at the archival level, and guidance through the publishing process. I have shepherded and produced book projects from raw material to completed manuscript into publication.
Institutional & Commission Research
For museums, foundations, and cultural institutions requiring deep archival reconstruction of multiple lives, units, or historical moments. If you need someone to go into the record and bring back the full human picture - not a summary, not a timeline, but the real, human story - this is my work.
A document is not the story.
It is where the story begins.
How I Work:
Every project with Fortitude Research is shaped by the specific demands of the project. There is no template because the work does not allow for one. What you will always receive:
Complete integrity. Stories entrusted to me are treated as sacred. They are not social media content. They are lives.
Archival precision. Every claim is sourced, double-checked, and cross-referenced. Every discrepancy is investigated, not papered over.
Factual devotion. I do not guess, speculate, or fill silence with fiction. If the record does not support it, it does not go on the page.
Narrative truth. The human being is always centered over weapons, tactics, or spectacle.
A historian who will follow the story as long as it takes to get it right.
Let’s Begin
Fortitude Research works with a small number of clients and projects at any given time. This is intentional. The work requires full presence and I protect that.
If you are a filmmaker, publisher, institution, or family with a story that deserves this level of attention, I want to hear from you.
Reach out. I'd love to hear what you're working on.