[citation needed] Avery attended graduate school at Northern Arizona University during her research for Emma Smith's biography.
Avery and Newell provided the following note in the book's introduction: Despite its quality and recognition, the biography was startling and controversial among leaders, administrators and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the preface to the second edition of the book, the authors write: «After a ten-months stalemate Linda Newell successfully petitioned church leaders to reconsider the prohibition.
On April 26, 1986, she was informed that the restrictions ... were no longer in effect.» Yet the fact that the lifting of that ban was not reported by the church-owned newspaper Deseret News led them to say that it «gave the unmistakable message to faithful church members that both the book and its authors were still suspect.» Avery produced a biography of the life of the youngest son of Joseph and Emma Smith, David Hyrum Smith, From Mission to Madness: Last Son of the Mormon Prophet in 1998.
The book draws on a large body of Smith's correspondence and poetry to examine both his personality and his emotional state.