Writings carried home from a life of

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Elsa is a child of Finnish immigrants. Her earliest memories are of her father’s lap and The Secret Garden read to her in Finnish. An only child on a remote Maryland farm, she grew up devouring books and haunting the local library.

She trained in music and was accepted into the Carnegie-Mellon School of Music. In her senior year of high school she rebelled and followed her true passion instead: writing. She went to Syracuse, a double major in journalism and sociology.

She married the love of her life, Gene Bonstein, right after graduation. They raised four daughters in New Jersey, where she freelanced for the Asbury Park Press, New Jersey Living, and others, and filled the house with teenagers: a youth group, a junior golf program, Girl Scouts.

She has played golf most of her life. In New Jersey she was Ladies Tournament Chair at a private member-owned club and played many of the state’s prestigious courses, among them Baltusrol and Plainfield.

Elsa and Gene moved to Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, where she wrote for the Brunswick Beacon and founded the Tournament of Champions, the Brunswick County golf championship, which she ran for fourteen years.

Today she lives in Richmond, Virginia, and writes full time. Newspapers taught her to work hard and keep a deadline. She writes fact-based fiction and believes strongly in face-to-face research.