Archive Widow

For thirty-six years, archivist Eleanor Langford quietly preserved records that powerful people wanted forgotten.

Now retired and living alone with thousands of unauthorized microfilm duplicates hidden beneath her house, Eleanor has no intention of reopening the past. Then her daughter brings her a box belonging to Roy Whitaker, a man who has spent nearly five decades searching for the truth about his mother’s disappearance.

Marjorie “Midge” Whitaker vanished from an Indiana truck stop in September 1978. Her case was quickly labeled a voluntary absence. Witness statements disappeared. County logs were removed. By 1994, the official microfilm reel containing the crucial dates had been designated Missing / Unaccounted For.

But Eleanor still has a copy.

With investigative reporter Davis Crell pressing for answers and Roy’s lifetime of unanswered letters pointing toward a coordinated cover-up, Eleanor begins reconstructing what happened—not only to Midge, but to the records themselves. Every document reveals another deliberate gap. Every missing page leads higher into the institutions Eleanor once served.

Publishing the truth could finally give Roy the answers he deserves.

It could also expose the secret archive Eleanor has spent a lifetime protecting.

Microfilm is the first novel in The Archive Widow, a tense mystery series about buried evidence, institutional corruption, and the woman who kept copies when the official version kept changing.