In 1998, Slattery, a faculty member of Pacifica Graduate Institute, turned a professional sabbatical into a personal pilgrimage, traveling to 11 monasteries and retreat houses throughout the western United States. He dedicates one chapter to each of his destinations, which are diverse in tradition and style and include a Russian Orthodox monastery, an urban prayer center run by Benedictine sisters and a Zen center. Slattery describes the flavor of each retreat center, but spends the bulk of each chapter recounting the spiritual musings prompted by each place he visited. At times, his account is pointed and compelling, as when he shares his unfolding comprehension that his own life is re-manifesting the patterns, if not the specifics, of his alcoholic father’s excessive behavior, or when he observes this personal transformation after weeks of pilgrimage: “I no longer believed in God.... Instead, I felt his presence in every corner of my life.” At other times, however, his ruminations tend toward the generalized and hypothetical. Moreover, Slattery’s style undermines his effectiveness: he has a fondness for stretching metaphors paper-thin, and his prose is frequently self-conscious, even affected, as when he describes monks arriving in chapel as “silent, sacred specters in white robes that whooshed.” Slattery’s sensitivity to spiritual matters is clear, but ultimately the book leaves the reader wanting a more satisfying, focused account of what was obviously a powerful pilgrimage journey. (Apr.) (Publishers Weekly, March 8, 2004)

“Dennis Patrick Slattery invites us to journey with him to experience the sacredness of everyday life at the monastic retreat centers he visits as well as on the paths and desert mountain ranges he walks. In this courageous journey of the heart, the author weaves his poetic reflections with the teachings of many writers. A stunning spiritual journey.”—Maureen Murdock, author, The Heroine’s Journey, Unreliable Truth, and Monday Morning Memoirs

“In his memoir, Dennis Patrick Slattery writes of a journey that is simultaneously inward and outward with an almost Augustinian appreciation of the ‘sweetness’ of things. With a writer’s relish and a mystic’s sensitivity, he describes . . .  making his way from a stay at one monastic community after another.”   —Christine Downing, author, The Goddess and The Long Journey Home

“Those who read Grace in the Desert have an opportunity to travel through the desert of the dark night of the soul to the mountain of the light of divine knowledge, to the cloud of unknowing which wraps us in the radiant darkness of divine love. It is one of the most reflective, richly poetic, and yes, spiritually uplifting ‘journals of the soul’ I have been privileged to read.”  —Peter C. Phan, The Ignacio Ellacuria Professor of Catholic Thought, Georgetown University, author, Journeys at Margins

“This is a marvelous and inspiring book that serves not only as a practical and historical guide to contemporary monastic retreats in the American West but also a reminder of how much we need to seek out periods of meditative solitude in our lives.”—Evans Lansing Smith, author, The Modernist Nekyia and Sacred Mysteries

“Dennis reveals himself as a child of God at play in the fields of the Lord.  His delight in the spiritual world is palpable, contagious. His decades-long habit of reflection has borne fruit in this compelling record of what continues to be a sacramental journey” —Allen Tate Wood, author, Moonstruck