Born into a family of Mormon survivalists, Tara Westover spent her days helping her mother make tinctures and strain herbs, or performing manual labor in her father’s junkyard rather than attending school. She also endured horrific abuse at the hands of her older brother, Shawn, which was overlooked by Tara’s parents. At seventeen, Tara followed the lead of her brother Tyler and headed off to college, an accomplishment made more difficult because Tara’s birth was never registered, since her father believed any government involvement meant interference. Doctors and hospitals were an absolute last resort, as her mother’s herbal remedies were supposed to cure almost everything. Tara’s educational efforts were met with disapproval from her parents, and though she could have easily gone back to Idaho and begged forgiveness, she continued her studies at Harvard and Cambridge, earning her doctorate in history.

Wow. What an inspiring story. The amount of abuse from her brother, the lack of safety precautions in the junkyard, no medical or dental care outside of her mother’s self-taught herbalism, no formal education…and yet Tara was determined enough to seek out a different life for herself. Some sections are difficult to read because of the vivid descriptions of the abusive episodes or the injuries various family members sustained, but I could easily imagine the beauty of the mountain that sheltered the dysfunction of the family.

Thought provoking and all the feels inducing, Educated tells the story of Tara Westover and her family who lived in Idaho. Never living as most people do-- no birth certificates, formal education, or life outside their family-- Tara fights to accept her family and believe it is all normal. Until she leaves. And from there, we see as Tara grapples with guilt of leaving and being what she can be. Highly recommend. Full review will be on my website 2/11/18.

A young girl living in rural Idaho wirh her parents and brothers. A father who distrusts the government and will not let his children attend school. A mother who is a self taught herbalist healer. This story tells of a survivalist family who keep to themselves, live off the land and are always ready to flee should the need arise. Tara helps her brothers and father in his scrap business and even when she suffers many cuts, bruises and the after-effects of an explosion, she is not taken to a doctor, but is treated at home by her mother. Her father is a domineering man and runs a tight household. One son manages to get a good education and this spurs Tara to want to do the same. She finally goes to school for the first time when she is 17 years old. She has no knowledge of past history and literally has to read as much as she can. Coming from this backwoods upbringing, it seems impossible for Tara to ever get to college, but she does and she goes way beyond what anyone could imagine that she could achieve.

I opened up Educated last night, just as I was about to go to sleep. Bad idea. Do not do this, because you won’t be able to put it down.

Tara Westover writes with immediacy, beauty, and power in an astonishing memoir of her own journey from uneducated isolation to earning an education from the world’s most prestigious universities.

Westover’s father feared the government and resisted all its intrusions on his personal autonomy. He drove an unlicensed, uninsured car, did not register his children’s births, and did not send them to school. He did not believe in traditional medicine, encouraging his wife, an herbalist, to study midwifery. His antipathy to government expressed itself in antipathy to anything resembling safety. He removed seatbelts and operated equipment without safeguards and with reckless disregard. When his kids were injured, their mother treated them with her homeopathic junk and herbal tinctures and salves and her spiritual power.

The children were “homeschooled” which meant they were mostly unschooled. They learned to read, write, and do basic math. They were mal-educated in science and history, what little they were taught was paranormal bunk and conspiracist garbage. Despite all that, Tara wanted to go to college and with great determination, she made it to BYU, the famed Mormon university where she soon learned how incredibly uneducated she was.



Educated is an amazing memoir. It is more than a journey from ignorance to education, from unschooled to a doctorate, but from the prison of superstition, patriarchy, and fear to the liberation of self-worth and knowledge. Tara is fascinated by history and the great thinkers. She learns about Isaiah Berlin’s negative liberty and positive liberty intellectually, but her real journey is finding that positive liberty in her own life.

There is a lot of pain in this memoir. There is also a lot of love. Her parents loved and love her. She loved and loves them. But love is not always enough. To be a free person, she has to love herself enough to free herself and this the memoir of that journey.

Educated will be released February 20, 2018. I received an e-galley from the publisher through NetGalley.

Educated at Penguin Random House
Tara Westover author site

I grew up with my nose perpetually in a book. So, the idea of not being able to go to school, of being deprived of an education, hit me really hard. It was hard for me to grasp that things I take for granted, like knowing what the Holocaust was or who MLK, Jr. was, were black holes to Tara.

Tara Westover is the child of a religious fanatic, someone who sees the government as pure evil. And by government, he means schools, hospitals, vaccines, seat belts, car insurance, etc. Everything we think of as civilization. His family awaits the Days of Abomination. There is a similarity here to The Glass Castle. Once again, we see how a mentally unbalanced father holds sway over an entire family. He thinks he speaks for God. Tara struggles with the knowledge that for her to go to school will mean a total separation from her father because he will never acknowledge that his ideas are not the correct ones.

Parts of this book are cringeworthy. I found myself shaking my head that folks would allow severe suffering rather than a trip to the hospital or the use of real medicine. I’ll warn you that some of these sections are not for the faint of heart. The descriptions are sickening.

I know little to nothing about the Mormon faith. Certainly, the faith of this family is not the true Mormon faith. But you get glimpses enough to also realize that there is a strong anti-woman bias in the faith and that women are definitely second class citizens. Broodmares more than humans on a par with men.

This book doesn’t sugarcoat things. It’s not an education makes everything better kind of story. Tara continues throughout the book to struggle to find her way, to stand up for her beliefs. Hell, to find her own beliefs.

This is an amazing book. It makes you realize how easy your life is. And how strong folks like Tara are to be able to rise above their beginnings and be able to fight back against the attempts of family to hold them down.

I’m willing to bet this book makes it onto a lot of best of 2018 lists. It will certainly be on mine. Highly recommend!

My thanks to netgalley and Random House for an advance copy of this book.

Wow. I have immense respect for Westover who through the sheer force of will has done something few who have had public (or private for that matter) education have been able to do. This book made me wonder how many other Taras are out there and what we're losing as a society as a result. If this book can make one person reach out to help a struggling kid trying to get an education, then it's worth everything. This is beautifully written in a prose style that pulls you along. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Read this!

This memoir is gripping from page one. We get a glimpse into the life of a girl who was raised without a mainstream education. At seventeen, she took matters into her own hands, studying enough to get accepted to Brigham Young University, then to Cambridge University and Harvard. She shares every struggle, triumph, and heartbreak with extreme detail. Some of the scenes will take your breath away. After all that she went through, I didn't get a sense that this was supposed to be a "tell all" book about her extremist parents or that she was bitter in any way. She writes with candor but also with a deep understanding of her family's actions. The last chapter was the most touching as she returned to her home. It shows that even after making a new life for herself, she still longed for a connection with her family. The end is not what you expect. I recommend this to anyone who has struggled with their identity and still looking for their place in the world. This story will give you the courage to break free of what is holding you back.

“Educated” by Tara Westover is one of the most inspiring memoirs I’ve read. Westover was raised in a poor, rural, abusive survivalist family in which she never allowed to attend school. She then went on to attend college and earned a PhD from Cambridge. Her story of “education” deals with more than just her collegiate accomplishments, but her ability to cast aside the religious brainwashing from her family and think for herself. Empowering.

It is hard to review this memoir. It is well written, but difficult to read due to the experiences of the author. I found it was very well framed and the author did a good job of sharing such a personal story in a cohesive way. I appreciated her opening her life. It was a gift as a reader to read about a life and childhood so different from my own.

Educated is a memoir that reads like an abnormal psychology textbook. Westover’s account brought two similar stories to mind — The Glass Castle and Hillbilly Elegy. If we’re giving out awards for the craziest character, Tara’s father gets the trophy. He was a religious fanatic who didn’t trust the government and bought into all of the crazy conspiracy theories that go along with that mindset. Of the three books, I enjoyed this one the most. It’s a “miracle“ Tara escaped that lifestyle, albeit not totally unscathed.

I was given a free copy of this book for an honest review. This book is unlike anything I have ever read. Tara is an amazing, young woman who grows up completely uneducated under the thumb of her father, a religious zealot, in a rural town. Tara is an obvious genius who teaches herself math and English well enough to gain acceptance into college. This book is about her personal struggle to overcome her past. An incredible, uplifting memoir. Highly recommended.

Buck Peak - a dangerous place to live....at any age!

Tara Westover grew up on a mountain with a paranoid volatile father who spent his days preparing for the end of world; a submissive mother who was blind to her children's hurt, five brothers and a sister....one brother so threateningly scary at times, I could hardly believe what he was doing or what I was reading.

Tara's story is one of courage, strength, and struggle as a child and as a young woman. To have endured the ridiculous demands and beliefs of her father, the humiliation....the verbal abuse....all while trying decipher truth from fiction....and educate herself amidst her life of chaos was a remarkable feat. And OMGOSH!....the accidents....the accidents....the accidents!

EDUCATED is powerful, shocking, and noteworthy debut....an unforgettable memoir.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the ARC COMING FEBRUARY 20, 2018 in exchange for an unbiased review.

I loved the first person narrative of this book. It read like a novel and grabbed me by the heart as well as the throat! It is a very compelling look at a different part of American culture, one that seems far removed from my own world. This is great reading for anyone interested in how other people grow up who want to explore the growth of memory and how one can color and change things to help them understand and survive their life.

This book is so gripping- and so sad- in its depiction of characters, events and tragedies within that at times you have to stop and remind yourself that somebody actually lived it.
As a life story, it’s inspiring: the book, written by Tara Westover, details her childhood growing up in remote Idaho, the child of two dedicated Mormons, as she makes the transition from homeschooled girl to a woman who recently completed a PhD at Cambridge University.
When you read what Tara’s childhood was like, that makes her journey even more amazing. After a bit of Googling I found out she was born in 1986, but the life she’s describing sounds like one from the 1930s. Her father was obsessed with the End of Days, and when he wasn’t hoarding food and petrol for the time when society would collapse he was forcing his children to work in his junkyard (which no end of accidents result from) and forbidding the family to go to hospital, see doctors, take dancing lessons or even mix with people outside their circle.
The result was a chaotic childhood, which I was totally gripped by. Westover has a great writing style, and she describes her childhood in a matter-of-fact way that lets you see the child she was, and how traumatising it was for her. From her family crashing the car multiple times to her father literally setting himself on fire, the things that happened to the Westovers literally boggles belief- as did their hugely strict faith, which perhaps encouraged it.
The heart of the book, though, lies in Tara’s attempts to find herself in an increasingly-stifling family unit, and the effect it has on her familial relationships as a result. Watching her struggle to accept her abusive older brother and indifferent parents is an incredibly painful read, and one of those moments where you’re acutely aware that this happened to a real person. Westover describes her family with great tenderness, shading over into nostalgia- and sometimes you want to shake her for it. But watching her find her wings and break free from that family is uplifting, and in the end the book ends on a tender note.
Overall, then, this book is at times bleak, sad, uplifting and interesting: you get the feeling that this is a from-the-heart confession from an extraordinary woman, and though sometimes it can be galling, it is ultimately a fascinating read.

This true story tugs at the reader's heart. Weaving the tale of the family in the woods and one girl's journey, the reader is taken on an adventure. As an educator I was shocked to learn about this families views on public education and I loved that the author got herself out of that situation and pursued a higher education.

What an accomplished novel: superb execution, raw unflinching dialogue, impressive character descriptions,and unrelenting tension. I am not sure there is going to be a better memoir in all of 2018. In Westover's searing novel, and I can't use hyperbole enough, she discusses her Mormon survivalist's family who refuse to vaccinate their 7 children, send them to public schools, or participate in anything that looks like an arm of the government. The children all have to help on the farm working with heavy machinery, scrapping for parts and enduring pain from accidents- the latter being the Lord's will. Early in Tara's life, her mother becomes a midwife and then develops oils and herb infusions to treat mishaps, as doctors and hospitals were mostly verboten. As the children were rarely exposed to others their age, they had no other frame of reference to know that their way of life was not the norm. Violence between one of the brothers and the author was downright scary, more so as the parents defended his actions and looked the other way. The story continues to unfold as Mary begins to find a sense of self, learning to read and write, going on to college and even securing a prestigious Gates scholarship. When one views the trajectory of her insular life to her final accomplishments, one can only shake his/her head in disbelief. From beginning to end this is a riveting, unwavering look at the power of family to define identity, and to explore the determinants of breaking free from deleterious bonds.Settle in and be prepared to be swept off your feet with this austere desolate novel that will scorch and penetrate your soul...and don't forget concurrently to be amazed!

This wasn't what I expected, and for the first third I wasn't even sure I wanted to keep reading.

But I did. And then I couldn't stop, reading long into the night, long past when I should have been sleeping, struggling for breath as the story unfolded, both wildly outside my experience and yet relatable.

That the author is alive at all is astounding. That she's remade herself into what she is now is nothing short of a miracle.

A well-written, absolutely fascinating memoir of a girl raised and homeschooled in the mountains of Idaho by her fundamentalist Mormon family and her struggles to be "Educated."

I was inspired by the grit of Tara Westover in this book. Coming from a family raised to shun the formal education system, Tara sets an example that you can achieve a lot if you set your mind to it.. Truly wonderful and inspiring.

This book is a heart wrenching tale of family, identity, separation, loss, and strength. The fact that the author was raised in a junkyard and ended up getting a doctorate is a testament to her clarity of mind, self-awareness, and strong sense of purpose gained partly from her junkyard life but more so from her intelligence and discernment. I was most impressed by the consistency of the voice in this book. It was such a great retelling of a dangerous and unique childhood. She also treats the topic of Mormonism with great respect, even though her father is a fanatic. As a BYU grad and a woman who spent many summers in the mountains of Idaho with my NRA-capped grandpa, this book resonated with me, and I just devoured every well-crafted word. Amazing.