Brenda Peterson is the author of eighteen books, including the novel Duck and Cover, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and I Want to Be Left Behind, selected by the Christian Science Monitor among the Top Ten Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010. Her most recent work, Your Life Is a Book, was a monthly Oprah book club selection. Peterson's work has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and she has contributed environmental commentary to Seattle NPR stations and on animal and environmental issues for the Huffington Post. She lives in Seattle on the shores of Salish Sea.

In Brenda Peterson's unusual memoir, fundamentalism meets deep ecology. The author's childhood in the high Sierra with her forest ranger father led her to embrace the entire natural world, while her Southern Baptist relatives prepared eagerly and busily to leave this world. Peterson survived fierce "sword drill" competitions demanding total recall of the Scriptures and awkward dinner table questions ("Will Rapture take the cat, too?") only to find that environmentalists with prophecies of doom can also be Endtimers. Peterson paints such a hilarious, loving portrait of each world that the reader, too, may want to be Left Behind.