"[2] In the 2019 afterword, Fraser describes her father's painful death from gangrene in his foot and his refusal to seek medical treatment for it, preferring to rely instead on Christian Science prayer.

[1] The first half of the book is a critical biography of Mary Baker Eddy which analyzes many controversies surrounding her life and the founding of Christian Science.

The first involves child mortality under the care of Christian Science practitioners, and the church's attempts to whitewash the deaths and their successful lobbying for exemption from legal liability in all fifty U.S. states.

Reviewing the book, Martin Gardner wrote in 1999: "No one has written more entertainingly and accurately than Fraser about the history of Christian Science after Mrs. Eddy died in 1910.

"[2] According to Philip Zaleski, in a New York Times review: "Few darker portraits of [Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science] have emerged since the days when Mark Twain called her a brass god with clay legs.