She attended Harvard College, from which she graduated summa cum laude and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa academic honor society.
Although the novel at first appears to take place in the Middle Ages, Yves's brother tells tales of travels to "Indo-China," and the villagers sing songs that are demonstrably examples of the blues.
In a rare blurb, the famously reticent writer Thomas Pynchon praised Yves Gundron as "[b]lessedly post-ironic, engaging and heartfelt—a story that moves with ease and certainty, deeply respecting the given world even as it shines with the integrity of dream,"[3] and John Freeman, writing for Time Out New York, called it "An engrossing folktale that, in our technology-crazed era, ought to be required reading.
[6] In Brookland, the bridge is the brainchild not of Pope but of a character invented by Barton: Prudence ("Prue") Winship, the proprietor of a successful gin distillery she inherited from her father.
Her third novel, The Book of Esther, is an alternate history tale in which the sixteen year-old heroine leads the resistance of a Jewish Empire against a German invasion in 1942, using magic and steampunk technology.
In a 2008 essay at Nextbook.org (now Tablet Magazine), entitled Eli Miller's Seltzer Delivery Service,[13] Barton writes at length of her Jewish upbringing, although in one 2007 article she described herself as "a Jewess who wouldn't leave the house without a stash of Tylenol, safety pins and mints.