No worries! My name came up earlier than expected on the lengthy hold list. Was this because the other readers devoured it in short order? Still, I delayed. A week before the book was due back to the library, I considered returning it unread. In retrospect, I'm grateful I abandoned that choice. Once I dove into the first official page, I was a goner. This book is so compulsively readable! It swept me away until I was fully immersed in the author's terrifying world. It was a darned fascinating story (one night, my husband had to tell me to put the book down and go to bed)!
Raised in a non-traditional family, Tara Westover tells a riveting and unforgettable life story. As her father prepared for the end of the world, she passed most of her childhood stockpiling food and ammunition without darkening a door to a school. She didn't home-school either. Instead, she spent her time working for her father scrapping metal on their mountain. How striking that someone passed such a large chunk of her childhood unaware of the blessings and joys of learning. And she was smarter than your average unschooled-urchin.
What a family she had! Her father attempted to insulate them from the evils all around: the wicked government, the worldly Mormons, the invasive medical establishment (mankind's healing in opposition to God's healing), and the threat of any system outside their family life. Tara's story is full of harrowing medical crises met with a reliance on herbs and home remedies alone. Alas, while fighting off external evils, the family failed to resist internal evils. Tara suffered horrendous abuse from a violent and manipulative older brother. Yet, the family not only remained silent and passive, but claimed Tara was the problem. Any difficulty stemmed from her evil heart and her intent to tear the family apart by addressing the issues of abuse.
It was no surprise that, when an older brother left to try his hand at college, Tara's curiosity began to build. She, too, left the confining home to spread her wings, first timidly, then defiantly. She studied at Brigham Young University, Cambridge, and Harvard. Throughout her story, she details what it felt like to come from such a conflicting background. In college, she encountered things she had never heard of: the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. She shares her experience as an outsider steadily growing comfortable in someone else's perspectives and worldview. What I appreciated most was her realistic internal conflict between supporting her family and breaking from them to experience life from a new point of view.
As I read, I longed to rescue this poor thing from the physical and emotional abuses. I rooted for her to flee and escape her narrow prison. But, it made me contemplative, too. I thought about the value of education, about difficulty with family loyalty when abuse is present, and about God's intended framework for the family. I believe God desires a husband to be the head of a home and to lead and guide his wife and children as Christ laid down his life for the church, His bride. Unfortunately, not all men lead with Christ-like headship. Too often they lead from a place of fear, as Tara's father did. Wishing to control every aspect of their lives, they assert their wills against others and push them down to obey their dictates and desires. God doesn't intend for us to live lives of fear from surrounding evil. He has conquered sin and darkness. He wants us to strive to live in the light, and with full reliance on Him, not ourselves.
Tara's parents sought to win her to the right side by anointing her and convincing her to set aside her involvement with the world. Thus, my thoughts went to true conversion and how it takes place through surrender to the sacrifice made for our sin by our Savior, Jesus Christ. It is not in the anointing. It is not in renouncing worldliness (although once you've accepted His blood covering your sin, you long to renounce anything not from Him). It comes solely through Christ's act on the cross to cancel our debt of sin. We need not fear evil's hold on the world, because "perfect love casts out fear." (1 John 4:18) Yet, this was a tale of extreme fear and its hold on a family.
Educated is a story of an individual breaking into the sunlight of learning and knowledge after living in the forbidding shadowy trees of her family life. It is a tale of passing from a life of limitations to a life of freedom. A beacon of hope, it challenges us to identify fears that may hold us hostage. The book is so well-written it will sweep you away while allowing you to walk alongside something you could experience no other way.
I thoroughly enjoyed Educated. As I closed the last page, I wondered if the author wrote the final lines first. They pack a powerful punch and draw every argument to its apt conclusion. I wanted to write to the author to commend her for her triumph and to thank her for her courage in sharing her story with the world at large. As memoirs go, this one was downright enticing and provided plenty of poignant take-away. Now, I just have to wait out the intervening months between reading the book and discussing it with fellow book club members in September. Hmm, if I put my name on the hold list now, will it come around again by mid-September?
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