Educated

Educated
By Tara Westover
Random House, 2018. Biography. 334 p.
Tara is raised in a fundamentalist/ survivalist Mormon home.  Her paranoid father mistrusts anything having to do with the government so his children don't attend school, go to the doctor or even have birth certificates.  Their education as children mostly consists of long religious rants by their father.  As the children grow up, one of the brothers becomes increasingly abusive, while another decides to escape the family homestead and pursue an education.  Tara has to decide which path she will take, but leaving her mountain home, as caustic as it is, will take a huge emotional toll on her.  Only when she gets a real education does she begin to be able to separate her self-image from the unworthy way her family had treated her.

This is an incredibly heartrending and honest memoir that has been the top most requested e-book at the Highland Library for four months running.  The amazing thing about it is how the author is able to look back on the way her mind bent and twisted to try to justify and live through what was happening to her. The writing is masterful, but there is a hint that it is even yet hard for her to fully understand her earlier life objectively.  Part of her is still the abused, brainwashed teen on the mountain.  I think it is the vulnerability the author embraces that has made this a best seller.

Warning: this is adult literature.  It contains some really graphic and gritty scenes of violence and emotional abuse.