Lori Banov Kaufmann grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. She is a debut fiction author at the ripe young age of 61 having had a twisty, detour-filled career path.

She has a BA from Princeton University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. While in grad school, she and her husband Yadin wrote the Ice Cream Lover’s Guide to Boston. While this important addition to the literary canon never made it onto the bestseller lists, it did get the authors a lot of free ice cream!

The intervening years were filled with raising a family and working as a strategy consultant for high-tech companies. She even tried to invent a device to kill head lice (which sadly didn’t work!) Upon retiring from consulting, Lori went back to one of her first loves, writing.

As soon as she learned of the discovery of the first-century tombstone that inspired Rebel Daughter, Lori wanted to know more. She was so intrigued by the unlikely but true love story the stone revealed that she embarked on a more than ten-year quest with some of the world's leading scholars and archaeologists to bring the real characters to life as accurately as possible.

She lives in Israel with her husband and four adult children.