Depression of the 1930s, and its transcripts were eventually cataloged at the Library of Congress. This work brought her into contact with Dale Morgan, who was the supervisor for the Utah Writer's Project under the Works Progress Administration. She continued this work for the Huntington Library as a field fellow in the 1940s. These diaries were preserved for others use due to Juanita's diligent pursuit and copying. Quicksand and Cactus: A Memoir of the Southern Mormon Frontier Per the encouragement of Dale Morgan, Brooks' colleague in the Works Project Administration, Juanita began writing her autobiography, Quicksand and Cactus in which she describes her childhood and early adulthood through a mix of first and third point narrative. She began the manuscript in 1944 and attempted to get published multiple times through 1949 before temporarily abandoning the project to focus on the publication of The Mountain Meadows Massacre. During her revisions of the script, she took advice from Morgan to concentrate on the chapters on her childhood, as the chapters on her later life showed little enthusiasm from editors. Discouraged by rejections from publication firms, she also chose to fictionalize herself in the later versions of the script, substituting for herself a fictional character, Sal, a revision that has been subject to much controversy in the authenticity of her recount. Brooks defended her revision in a letter to D. L. Chambers stating, "While I can see that it may lose something in authenticity, I hope that it may gain in vitality. I had felt that, to justify the book, the subject of an autobiography should have achieved distinction in some field, while a good story may just be a good story." Brooks revisited the book in 1970 after returning to Salt Lake City after the death of her husband Will Brooks. The next five years were painstaking to finish the book as Brooks found it challenging to stick to it for long periods of time, and her memory began to falter in regards to her first marriage and early widowhood. In 1977, her children moved her back to St. George and boxed the manuscripts, essentially marking the end of her writing career. The rest of the publication was left up to Trudy McMurrin, Brooks' assigned developmental editor at the University of Utah Press. McMurrin pieced together chapters and ideas, but a lack of dates and unity in style and themes and despite