Capturing the human experience is no small feat. In her latest work, The Precarious Walk: Essays From Sand & Sky ($19, Torrey House Press), Phyllis Barber attempts to do exactly that.
The Nevada native grew up in Boulder City and Las Vegas. She officially began her writing career in the 1980s, when a small publishing firm in Provo, Utah, commissioned a children’s book from Barber. She has since had several books published, including three memoirs and a novel. The Precarious Walk is her ninth published book.
Written over a period of 25 years, the collection of personal essays muses on the elements that make up the human experience, like spirituality, responsibility and loss. It also transports the reader to multiple landscapes, including the Mojave Desert, and places she has visited, like Ecuador and Slovenia.
Phyllis Barber
“[Reviewers] have said that it’s a journey into the soul of what really matters to people,” Barber says. “That’s kind of where I’m at. It sounds a little metaphysical, but that’s it.”
The essays are full of existential questions. In one piece, Barber asks, “Does a grain of sand have a name? Or a drop of water? Then why human beings?”
“I’m afraid I am prone to deep questions,” she laughs. “It’s kind of a bad habit.”
Still, Barber’s prose should keep you flipping pages eagerly. Each essay contains a story written with so much precision and imagery, it feels as though one might be reading a novel, instead of navigating the author’s deepest thoughts.
The reader will experience nuclear weapons testing—“a gash that showed the sky’s insides for a minute”—through the eyes of a young child. And the Mojave Desert, with its “lapping dry tongue,” is a fascinating character in Barber’s writing—a wise teacher, instilling solitude and observation.
The Precarious Walk feels both current and historic, a potential time capsule for future Nevadans to understand what it was like to live in the Mojave Desert during such a pivotal time.
Barber initially set out to be a concert pianist. She earned a degree in music from San Jose State University with an emphasis on piano. After becoming a mother to four boys, she realized she need to change paths.
“I thought, ‘What can I do to express my creativity?’ says Barber, who now lives in Park City, Utah. “And I always liked writing. I wrote a little bit here and there.”
The author will appear at the Writer’s Block on June 3 for a reading and book signing. She’ll share one of her favorite essays, “Love Via Jonny.” It’s a coming-of-age story about “the feelings you have when you’re odd, skinny and nobody notices and how you can make that change,” Barber says.
Copies of The Precarious Walk will be on sale at the event, and the collection will be widely available for purchase on June 21.
PHYLLIS BARBER June 3, 7 p.m., free. The Writer’s Block, thewritersblock.org.
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