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barber R a w E d g e s UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA PRESS When Phyllis Barber’s thirty-threeyear marriage disintegrated, she had to redefine herself as a woman, mother, and artist. She also had to reconcile the jarring dissonance between her idealistic Mormon vision of marriage as a relationship that would endure through all eternity, and the painful reality of mutual infidelities and jealousies , disparate ambitions and needs. Raw Edges is Barber’s moving account of her journey through the “lean years” that followed her divorce and her memories of a long, eventful marriage between two gifted and loving people. Barber’s path to a new identity was rocky and often deeply troubled. There was a blighted cross-country bicycle trip; a tortured relationshipwithadrugaddict ;asecondfailedmarriage; and periods of recurring depression. This story is interwoven with a narrative of the marriage itself, a marriage that began with “sealing” in a Mormon temple, endured through the birth of four sons and the development of two careers, but foundered when the couple’s hopes and needs failed to match their optimistic expectations and the rigid strictures of Mormon life. Also by Phyllis Barber How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir Paper, 978-0-87417-233-1, $14.95 RawEdgestakesupwhereBarber’searliermemoir, HowIGotCultured,leavesoff,tracingheradultlife fromcollegeon.Onabroaderlevel,itreflectsthe predicamentthatmanywomenexperienceasmarriagesdisintegrate ,familiesfallapart,andpeople failtoachievetheexpectationsthattheirsocietyor faithsetsforthem.Itisalsoastoryofhope,ofhow awomanovercomebygriefandconfusioneventuallyreinventsherselfandfindsanewapproachto life. Ultimately, Raw Edges is a love story, about what we find in life to love, and about how love and the ability to love survive pain and betrayal. PhyllisBarberistheaward-winningauthor ofsevenbooks,includinganearliermemoir,How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir. She teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Writing Program and lives in Denver. She was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2005. NEVADA praise for Raw Edges “Few writers are willing to go marrow-deep in search of truth. Barber’s remarkable memoir about her lifelong search for the meaning of love and spirituality is the story of every woman on this planet who ever uttered the words ‘I love you’ to a man and then was stunned at the aftermath. Her style is spare and elegiac, her story is honest, heartfelt, and unforgettable. I highly recommend Raw Edges—a beautifully written story of what it means to be a wife, mother, lover, and independent woman.” Jo-Ann Mapson author of The Owl & Moon Café: A Novel “Whether you want a model of tenacity in confronting the rigors of modern life or an example of a deft handling of metaphor in prose, you’ll find that this is a gripping, page-turning saga.” Levi S. Peterson author of A Rascal by Nature, A Christian by Yearning: A Mormon Autobiography “In this remarkably honest memoir, Phyllis Barber takes readers on a harrowing journey from Mormon girlhood through marriage, motherhood, codependency, and a thousand-mile bicycle trip to an epiphany in a Denver attic. Although the details belong to her, the issues she explores will be familiar to anyone who has navigated the boundary between compassion and obsession.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich author of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History “Drawing from the raw edges of experience, Barber delineates the thin lines between faith and faithlessness, between terrible loss and wondrous abundance, and between the past and the present, braiding them beautifully in this remarkable memoir. Her achievement in this brave book is an act of fidelity—to life itself.” William R. Handley coeditor of True West: Authenticity and the American West MEMOIR, GENDER STUDIES 9 7 8 0 8 7 4 1 7 8 0 7 4 ISBN 978-0-87417-807-4 5 2 6 9 5 Jacket illustration: © Photo Alto / Veer Jacket design: Rebecca Lown Design ...