[1] While there, McLerran befriended art dealer Luce de Peron and her later husband, painter Oswaldo Guayasamín.
McLerran's thesis project sought to establish a chronology of pre-Columbian civilizations in the northern highlands of Ecuador.
She worked with Lester Grinspoon on research in psychiatric epidemiology at Massachusetts Mental Hospital.
It tells the true story of a hill in Yuma, Arizona, where McLerran's mother and her friends created a play town in 1915.
As a result of the book, the area was made into a city park in 2000,[4] and an annual Roxaboxen Festival was celebrated.