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WELCOME TO PHYLLIS BARBER'S WEBSITE. The above quote, by the way, refers to How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir, cited in 2012 as one of the top five books written about Las Vegas.

 

 WRITING NOTES:

In April 2020, THE DESERT BETWEEN US was released by the University of Nevada Press (in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis which caused the cancellation of her book tour). Luckily, THE CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS listed the book as one of their top ten reads for the month. The novel was nominated for the READING THE WEST ADULT FICTION AWARD sponsored by the Independent Booksellers Association, was a finalist for the ASSOCIATION FOR MORMON LETTERS NOVEL AWARD and a semi-finalist in the LEAPFROG FICTION CONTEST.

This book tells the story of camels bought in the Middle East by the U.S. Government in 1858, used to explore the possibility of a military road between Albuquerque and the Colorado River--a waterless terrain. A road was built later and became the origin of Route 66. The book's main characters are Geoffrey Scott--an abolitionist/roadbuilder, a camel named Adababa, a Mojave Indian who has a mixed history with Geoffrey Scott, an angry polygamist in St. Thomas, Nevada, and his third wife, Sophia Hughes--the female lead in a love triangle.

 

In the Spring of 2022, a collection of essays will be published by Torrey House Press:

THE PRECARIOUS WALK: ESSAYS FROM SAND AND SUN

Essays in this collection have been cited as Notable in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS: "Sweetgrass" in 2010 and "The Knife Handler" in 2011. "The Knife Handler" was also cited as Notable in BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2011.

Early readers are weighing in! 

“Where are you headed, dear one? To a silent retreat? To your roots in the rich dirt? To a faraway place seeking answers? To a drying-up waters? To a reassessment of your faith? Phyllis Barber has been there, done that, and lived to tell the tale and thank goodness. In this book I find a mapping of the days to come, of what it will mean to grow older, perhaps wiser, to surrender to the earth itself. Wherever you are headed, pick it up and take it with you.”
—JOANNA BROOKS, author of The Book of Mormon Girl and Mormonism and White Supremacy

“Wow. What an extraordinary book! The seventeen essays in Phyllis Barber’s The Precarious Walk chronicle her deeply moving and inspiring lifelong quest to discover both the Divine—whether it be called God, Goddess, Yahweh, Allah, Jesus Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Krishna, or Spirit—and her essential self, which she compares to the core of a matryoshka, a Russian nesting doll that contains a series of smaller and smaller dolls, each one similar yet different in some important way from the others. Her book is itself a kind of matryoshka, each essay revealing a stage in her quest to comprehend the Divine and her self. Barber’s walk may be a precarious one but it’s also an essential one, and I urge you to read her book and join her on her journey.”
—DAVID JAUSS, author of Glossolalia: New & Selected Stories

“Phyllis Barber wields luminous narrative skills to recall her desert childhood and explore her ‘precarious’ spiritual journey. A latter-day desert-dwelling non-fiction Willa Cather, she roots her loving family stories in vivid landscape. A fine essayist in pursuit of spiritual grounding, she finds God in the ‘succulent, generous, breathtaking …frightening, wind-blown unpredictable desert,’ and yet she knows she’ll always be ‘tangled in Mormon thread.’ Her ‘yen for the Soul’ leads her through a whirl of essential questions. Barber makes a thought-provoking companion as she searches for answers.”
—STEPHEN TRIMBLE, author of The Mike File: A Story of Grief and Hope

 “Phyllis Barber is a masterful evocator of landscape—whether it’s the dry, expansive desert landscape in which she was raised, the deep, expansive religious landscape she has tried to escape, or the ever-shifting sands of literature’s landscape. Each landscape, whether geographical, spiritual, or literary (and sometimes all three), calls to her as if they are burrowed in her bones. I found it remarkable to wander with her on her written quest for answers to all kinds of questions in this collection of essays.”
—TANYA MILLS, The Book Bungalow, St. George, Utah
 

And, more information, should you want it!

 In 2016, Barber was given an award by the Association for Mormon Letters for OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION TO MORMON LETTERS.  

Barber's eighth book, TO THE MOUNTAIN; ONE MORMON WOMAN'S SEARCH FOR SPIRIT, was released from Quest Books in 2014. It is the story of the author's twenty-year hiatus from Mormonism and her visits with shamans in Peru and Ecuador; Tibetan Buddhist monks in North India and Tibet; a variety of Baptist congregations in Arkansas, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina; megachurches; charismatic Christian congregations, travels with godddess worshipers in the Yucatan, and much more. The book's purpose is to demonstrate how we can not only tolerate a variety of ideas in the spiritual realm, but can learn from their wisdom.

 

 Official book trailer on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=phyllis+barber+to+the+mountain