Writings carried home from a life of

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Elsa Bonstein is the daughter of Finnish immigrants. She grew up on a chicken farm in North East, Maryland, among Swedes, Danes, and other Finns. She is fluent in Finnish and has visited her parents’ home country several times. Her earliest memory is sitting in her father’s lap while he read her The Secret Garden in Finnish.

She always wanted to be a writer. She went to Syracuse University and graduated with a dual major in journalism and sociology. She married Gene Bonstein, and they raised four daughters in New Jersey, where she freelanced for the Asbury Park Press, New Jersey Living, and other papers and magazines. She wrote business articles, restaurant reviews, op-eds, feature stories, and humor, and published poetry and children’s stories.

In 2000 she and Gene moved to Ocean Isle Beach, North Carolina, and she began writing for the Brunswick Beacon. She also ran the Tournament of Champions and was a founding board member of the First Tee of Brunswick County.

She now lives in Richmond, Virginia, and writes full time. She calls her books fact-based fiction, because she researches them in person. Find Edsell! took two years with the New Jersey Forest Fire Service, and Footes Creek draws on the fourteen years she spent writing about golf.