Educated by Tara Westover
- Dec 5, 2024
- 15 min read
Updated: Sep 22
Educated by Tara Westover is a bestselling memoir about a girl raised in a survivalist Mormon family in rural Idaho who grows up without formal schooling, endures familial abuse and medical neglect, teaches herself enough math and grammar to enter Brigham Young University, and later earns graduate degrees at Cambridge and Harvard. The narrative confronts religious extremism, patriarchal control, and gaslighting inside a closed household while tracing the cost of breaking with family to claim an education and an identity of one’s own. Readers of literary memoir, trauma and recovery narratives, and books about religion, autonomy, and resilience will find an unflinching story of self-invention through education.
Educated is a Fearless Memoir of Deeply Unsettling Truths on Religion, Familial Abuse, and Identity
The first glimpse the Westover family had of the book that would go on to shatter their lives came in the form of an unmarked manuscript, left under the cover of night on the seat of a family truck.
