Educated by Tara Westover is a memoir detailing Westover’s childhood and adolescence growing up in a family of Mormon survivalists. Tara, the youngest of seven children, always knew that her family was more unconventional than the typical Mormon family. Still, she fully embraced her childhood atop Buck’s Peak in rural Idaho. Tara’s father, Gene, held very extreme beliefs and was eager to preach them to anyone who would listen. Believing that the government was not to be trusted or relied on, he didn’t want his family attending school, receiving medical attention from hospitals, or even having birth certificates. Tara’s mother finds herself taking up a job as a midwife upon Gene’s request, and seeing as she was the only midwife around for hundreds of miles, her work became quite sought after. However, after a severe car accident left her with a serious head injury and unable to work, she discovered she had an impressive knack for herbal remedies and muscle testing, and eventually created an extremely profitable business out of it.
Tara had never even heard of college until her older brother Tyler, who was always focused on his schooling even from home, asked to attend. Countless lectures from their father and unspoken tension in the household couldn’t stop him and Tyler headed off to BYU that fall, yet for him it meant cutting off a part of his family ties. Growing up,Tara and her older brother Shawn had been nearly strangers, but they began to grow closer after Shawn moved back home. However, Shawn became verbally and physically abusive to Tara, calling her horrible names and leaving her with bodily injuries. Her brother Tyler encouraged her to get away from Shawn and go to college, so she studied hard to get a good score on her ACTs and pass herself off as being homeschooled, despite not having much of a formal education at all. She was met with great resistance from her father who did not support her going to college, and leaving home cost Tara a strained relationship with her family. In her adult years, she tries to tell her parents about the abuse she suffered from Shawn, but in standing her ground, matters arise into utter chaos, dividing her family in two.
Educated by Tara Westover is an incredibly powerful read with an important story to tell. It was both difficult to read and impossible to put down. Westover spared none of the horrific details of her intense family dynamic, yet it made the memoir all the more compelling. With gruesome accident after accident occurring, it almost felt like a work of fiction where the author hates all of the characters in the story, but it was her family’s reality. Reading about how her brother treated her and feeling the sense of helplessness Tara felt growing up was truly heartbreaking. Westover recalls her attempts at repressing her emotional state at the time with such pain-staking clarity. The reader feels the agony all over again as Tara tries to confront her family with the truth, but her parents refuse to listen, causing her to doubt her own memory. This memoir is extremely well written and recounted in amazing detail. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone, as I believe it is a story everyone should hear.
This book at first glance does not seem like something I would usually be interested in reading. Hearing your summary of it though kept me engaged without spoiling all of the book. I think you did a really good job of explaining and giving context about the main character and her life. I am excited to see what other reviews you give because my book list will definitely grow longer!
Wow, the storyline was extreme, and it definitely makes me sad that this was one’s own experience, as it was a memoir. You did a great job summarizing the book as well as the authors credibility. Will put it on my list!
I must have glossed over the word memoir in the first sentence, because reading through this, all I could think was “this happens in real life and no one listens”. When you wrapped up with an analysis about the strength it took to write a memoir, I felt the poignancy of the storyline all the more powerfully. Religious extremists (or dare I say, cults) are an issue many people don’t hear about because the communities are VERY isolated, and not many people realize they can make it out. And even if they escape, many are hesitant to expose the life they lived before. All the more power to this author.