"Educated" by Tara Westover

On the NY Times bestseller list for many weeks, I had trepidation about this memoir. Having read many memoirs of terrible childhoods (i.e. "The Glass Castle," "Hillbilly Elegy,"Running with Scissors," "Angela's Ashes" to name just four) I have lost patience with many of them. Often times the writer could have left his or her home and started on a new life.  Yes, this might have been difficult but because the author was, at some point, an adult, it would have been possible. Until I read "Educated" the only other memoir of a terrible childhood I really liked was "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls. She put up with her life until she could leave and leave she did.

I know many who have had crappy childhoods. I did not have a pleasant one but it wasn't terrible.  Tara Westover, however, had a terrible life. Raised by very strict Mormon parents in rural Idaho, far off the grid, she was unschooled, unsocialized, belittled and physically abused.  She was not sexually abused but her life was pretty much hell. Her mother, after a life-threatening and life-changing automobile accident where she undoubtedly suffered brain damage, became a sort of "healer" from the herb and spirit world.  (That makes no sense, of course, until you read the book.)  Her father was a scrapper, finding used cars, used steel, used iron and reselling it.  He also believed that the "End of Days" was near and made all of his family stockpile everything: food, water, guns, ammo, fuel. He was a tyrant, cruel, unforgiving and flat out mean.

Tara knew how to read and she worked the hard scrapping life along with her several brothers.  She longed for an education because she knew it would be the only way out of the life her parents had chosen for her.

How she figured out how to get that education and how she struggled with emotional, psychological, physical trauma while trying to educate herself is a remarkable story.

"Educated" is not pretty or sugar coated. Tara's life story is brutal but because there is success in many ways, it is totally worth reading. What strength and resilience she shows in simply trying to be part of the everyday world is amazing.

Highly recommended.

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