Elena Maria Lopez is part of America’s growing biracial, Quaker melting pot. The product of a black, Puerto-Rican father and a white mother, she grew up between Cherry Hill, New Jersey and Amherst, Massachusetts.

She developed the nasty habit of smoking cigars during her divorce, justifying it as her “Buddhist breathing technique.”

As a journalist, she's covered business and political topics ranging from immigration and homeland security to demographics and law. Lopez also worked for several years as a financial writer and trainer. Her publication credits include Business Week, USA Today and The (Newark) Star-Ledger.

Educated at Rutgers University in public policy and politics, Lopez has advanced training in corporate finance and law.

In Mourning Bride, Lopez chronicles the terrifying story of dealing with the man she married – a man that attacked and threatened to kill her to protect his own fraudulent immigration status – as well as the local law enforcement officials and the complacent immigration bureaucracy that refused to help her.

Now divorced, she lives in New Jersey with a protected address. Her ex-husband continues to live and work in the Philadelphia area and remains on the fast track to U.S. citizenship, which he might have already attained.