[2] Butler is a 1953 graduate of Bennington College,[3] and went on to earn a master's degree in political science at Columbia University.
[4] Butler spent ten years working on her biography of Amelia Earhart.
[2] She was partially inspired to work on the life of Earhart because her (Butler's) own mother had been a pilot and a member of the Ninety-Nines.
She visited pertinent locations such as Trepassey and Harbour Grace, and did much of her research at the Schlesinger Library, which housed the papers of Amelia Earhart.
The original title of the book was to be Amelia Earhart, An Extraordinary Woman, but Butler's husband put forward the idea of East to the Dawn.