She was raised as a member of the LDS Church and attended Brigham Young University (BYU). After having stopped practicing the religion, she published the book Secret Ceremonies in which she describes her childhood, her marriage, her divorce and the temple ceremonies in the Mormon church. She also blames the church "for her inability to enjoy marital intercourse, for her three failed marriages, for her attempted suicide, and for the two months she spent in a psychiatric institution". The book was a commercial success; it spent 15 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list and over 500,000 copies were printed. The LDS Church was not pleased with Secret Ceremonies and Ms Laake was excommunicated for apostasy because of her criticisms and also for her "detailed revelation of top-secret Mormon temple ceremonies" shortly after the book's publication. In 1994, Laake was diagnosed with having breast cancer. In 2000, she took her own life by "ingesting an overdose of pills" in Charleston, South Carolina. At the time of her death Ms Laake was being actively treated for depression.According to her friend and one-time coworker Terry Green Sterling, this depression was severe and ongoing for a period of several years prior to the suicide.

She received various awards throughout her career. In 1983, she won a special citation from the University of Missouri for her feature writing.. Also in 1983 The Columbia School of Journalism gave Laake a special award for her short story "Wormboys". In 1987 she won Arizona's feature column writing award. In 1988, she was elected Arizona's "Journalist of the Year" and won the National Headliner award in 1991.