Elaine Sorensen Marshall was a professor of nursing at Georgia Southern University when this was written. Also at that university, she serves as Bulloch Healthcare endowed chair, the director of the Center for Nursing Scholarship, and the  co-director of the Rural Health Research Institute.

She is married to Dr. John Marshall, and they are the parents of a combined family of nine children and twenty-one grandchildren. She teaches early-morning seminary and has written on healing from both a professional and spiritual perspective.