Educated by Tara Westover

Tara Westover grew up in Idaho in a fundamentalist religious family.  She was one of seven children, the second from the last.  They lived in a rural area and as much off the grid as her father could make them.  They didn't register the children at birth, her father made his living in a marginal cash business and the family had no use for doctors and modern medicine.  The mother was a midwife and an herbalist and she had her babies at home and when someone was hurt or ill, she used her herbal knowledge to care for them.

The children were schooled at home.   Or what passed for education as little formal effort was made.  Tara tells of one incident where she flipped through 50 pages in her math book and told her mother she had done 50 pages.  Rather than quizzing her to see if she had understanding, her mother just praised her telling her that's why they home schooled because Tara could never work at her fast pace in the public schools.  Her father ruled the household and was a survivalist; he took stories such as Ruby Ridge and the Weaver family to heart as it fed into his paranoid tendencies.

Tara not only wasn't supported in getting an education but there were other consequences.  She was raised doing dangerous work, stripping parts in a junkyard or driving large pieces of equipment as her father and brothers worked on building things.  When one of her brothers started acting out his anger on Tara, she tried to hide it.  She got no protection or acknowledgement of what was happening from her family.

But something in Tara wanted more.  When one of her elder brothers rebelled and went off to college, it stirred that impulse in Tara.  She studied and studied until she could pass the ACT test and even made a high enough score to obtain a scholarship.  She moved off to college and found a society there that was different from her home and its beliefs in every manner possible.  As she studied and discovered the truths about the world that she had no idea of, she determined that she would live in the educated world.  She went on to get a degree, a master's and even a doctorate from Cambridge in England.

This is a memoir and as such, is written by Westover from her memories.  Her family disputes her version of events and she is estranged from most of them at this point.  Her feeling that they did not support her or help her can not be reconciled in their view of this period.  Westover documents her events with diary entries and letters from her siblings as best she can, but there is always a difference in how different family members remember events.  Regardless of the truth, it is a remarkable achievement to have three children from such a background go on to get doctorates as the Westover family did.  This book is recommended for nonfiction readers.