Winder grew up in the Queens Lake neighborhood of York County, Virginia.
[1] She graduated from Bruton High School and the College of William and Mary and earned an MFA from George Mason University.
[3] The book is structured more like a magazine, with sidebars describing products and fashion from the time period, as well as excerpts from Plath's journals.
[4] Winder's 2017 book Marilyn in Manhattan[5] focused on 1955, with Newsday calling it "an approach that falls squarely within the popular subgenre of micro-biography".
[6] The New York Times review said "rarely has a book about Marilyn Monroe been more maddening"[7] and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch review said the book's market might be "slender" and critiqued Winder's confusing use of first names only,[8] while Publishers Weekly called it a "captivating look" at Monroe's escape from Los Angeles.