[1] In 1979 she graduated from Mercer Island High School,[2] and in 1987 she earned a PhD in English and American literature from Harvard University for a thesis entitled A Perfect Contempt: The Poetry of James Merrill.

[3] Formerly on the editorial staff of the New Yorker, Fraser's work has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and New York Review of Books, among others.

[4][5] Whitney Balliett, himself a former Christian Scientist, described the book as a "critical history that ... casts a clear, merciless light" on the religion.

[6] Fraser's other books are Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution (2009), which presents a broad vision of global ecological conservation;[7] and Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder (2017), the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

[8] She is also the editor of the two volumes of the Library of America's Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Little House Books (2012).