Educated

"Educated" by Tara Westover is the mind boggling memoir of a homeschooled girl living in the mountains of Idaho. She shares unbelievable stories about her father's "doomsday" beliefs and how she was constantly waiting for the world to end. She talks about her work helping her mother as a midwife and herbalist and helping her father salvage in his dangerous junkyard. Growing up she never saw a doctor, went to a hospital, or set foot in a classroom. She endured her brother's tormenting abuses, listened to her father's rantings about the corruption of government, and escaped to her grandparents home for some peace whenever she could. As a teenager she began educating herself and reading every book she could get her hands on. With her older brother's encouragement she studied for the SAT and applied for college. At age 17 as a freshman at Brigham Young University Tara stepped foot in a classroom for the first time in her entire life.

Tara's life of endurance and overcoming is inspirational and a little jaw dropping. Some of her experiences were incredibly difficult to wrap my head around, especially because her home is not that far from my own. She grows up in the "same" religion that I did, but the way her family practices religion is very different from my own. Some of the parents negligence was very upsetting to me and it makes me sad that people can get away with letting their children grow up in such toxic and harmful surroundings. Even though some parts of her memoir were difficult to swallow I couldn't stop reading it. When I did finish the book I got online and did even more research about her family and watched a few different interviews that she had done. Her life is amazing to me and I would recommend this book for sure.