In 1999 my great-aunt Eleanor mailed her unfinished autobiography to her brother David — my grandfather — with a cover letter. She writes, "AND DON'T SAY IT'S INTERESTING, i hate that phrase. I want to know if it's close to the truth."

The book handles the archive three ways. Eleanor's autobiography is reproduced untouched, typewriter strikethroughs and all. David's genealogy — written for my cousin Jason's school project — is dismantled and collaged with military forms, navigation charts, and photographs; Jason and David died in 2014, three months apart, and that section, Jason's Project (cont.), continues what they left. Then sixty years of Eleanor's letters, layered with her newspaper columns, stamps, envelopes, and all sorts of other stuff.