Fisher is often grouped with disaffected Mormon writers in Mormon fiction. Leonard Arrington and his graduate student John Haupt wrote that Fisher was sympathetic towards Mormonism, an idea that Fisher's widow, Opal Laurel Holmes, strongly repudiated. A more recent paper by Michael Austin suggests that Fisher's work was influenced by residual "scars" of his family heritage and Mormon upbringing and that these scars led to his incorporating into many of his novels the theme of a religious unbeliever trying to find ways to negotiate a life within a religious community.