J. Helen Elza grew up second oldest among seven brothers and two sisters in a rowdy household in the Dallas suburb of Hurst, Texas, where early on, books became Elza's best friends. Her love for reading and writing began in childhood and continued into 1972 when a chance encounter with a stranger redirected the course of her life and birthed Elza's dreams of becoming a novelist.

J. Helen Elza became an American best-selling author with the release of her first novel, Rosemillion, book I of The Appalachian Trilogy. Readers comment that the author's portrayal of Appalachia and its people from the early 50s to the mid-70s is so real, they can smell the biscuits baking and feel the weight of the beautiful handmade quilts.

Elza experienced the amazing people from the Kentucky, Virginia, and the West Virginia Mountains of Appalachia throughout her thirty-year marriage to a man from "W" Hollow, Greenup, Kentucky. He and his family were neighbors to Jesse Stuart, Kentucky's beloved novelist and poet laureate, who mentions them in his books.

Elza writes and people watches full-time from Jacob's Pond, her home in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee where she lives with her family, three dogs, a bodacious cat, one visiting raccoon, and a variety of other woodland critters.

In her own words, "I love what I'm doing and I'm doing what I love."