pHil Rittenhouse

Phil Rittenhouse writes historical thrillers that explore the intersection of memory, history, and faith—stories about what history remembers, and what it leaves behind.

His Storyteller Trilogy follows Ashe, a man who has walked through two thousand years of human history and carries the weight of his journey in ways few people could imagine. Soldier, wanderer, mechanic in the rise and witness to the fall of empires, Ashe finds himself in the modern world searching for meaning in a life he has no right to live, burdened by deaths he has less right to survive.

Phil’s work blends modern suspense with deep historical roots, drawing on ancient texts, philosophy, and the long echoes of history to ask what it means to live long enough to see the consequences of our choices unfold across centuries.

Before turning his attention to storytelling, Phil’s creative journey wandered through several other disciplines. Once a cartoonist, he spent more than a decade as a research chemist while moonlighting as a web designer on the fledgling internet. He eventually found his way into software development at Microsoft, where he has spent nearly two decades solving problems and optimizing business processes in SharePoint and Dynamics 365.

The habits of observation and experimentation, along with a love for occasional controlled explosions, have proven surprisingly useful when writing fiction.

Phil lives in rural Illinois with his wife, four children, and a small ecosystem of pets. When not writing or debugging code, he can be found reading late into the night, tumbling down one more historical rabbit hole that may or may not turn into his next story—because history rarely tells the whole story the first time.