I just celebrated my five-year anniversary at work. That means I get to attend the fancy lunch in the fall (finally), but it also means I, along with the rest of the Class of 2014, graduated college 5 years ago. Time flies - especially when you have 52 books a year to read.

Book Read: Educated
Author: Tara Westover
Number of Books Read, 2019 Edition: 21

Tara Westover was raised by survivalists in Idaho. Until she left home at seventeen to attend college, she had never set foot in a classroom. She was nine before she even received a birth certificate. “Home-schooled,” she learned everything she knew from her family and school books found in the basement.

Westover tells stories of growing up, preparing to survive, with religious parents who thought the government was out to get them. Stories of injuries healed by her herbalist mother, of brothers who wanted out, of a brother who used his strength for bad and of a crush who helped her see what was outside, are all hear. It’s a childhood I couldn’t begin to imagine.

Then Westover sets her sights on BYU, and her life begins to change. She begins to see the world in a different light, learning about history we all grew up learning. A good example - she was seventeen, and a freshman in college when she first learned of the Holocaust. After a successful semester in Cambridge, Tara embarks on an educational path that eventually leads to a PhD there.

Westover battles with the world in which she grew up and the world she is living in, and battles to find her voice. As she becomes an adult and eventually travels the world, sacrifices will be made. But life and its choices are an education in itself.

I was on the wait list at the library for months before I finally was able to check out a copy. I had heard this book was excellent, but I now understand why I had to wait.

Some of Westover’s stories seem out of this world. In one, her father is severely burned, but instead of going to a hospital, he’s healed with herbs and homemade medicine. I get the heebie-jeebies just thinking about that one. Others make you see the value of an education - Tara learned everything at a later age, from history to writing techniques, all the way to vaccinations and modern medicine. Westover describes stories with such detail, that you’ll feel like you are watching it play out on film.

Tara also, despite not seeing eye to eye with some of her family, never seems bitter. Tara mentions that she reaches out to her mother each time she is in Idaho, with no luck, but yet she keeps trying. Westover includes several notes throughout her writing, to comment that things have been paraphrased or her memories are not the same as her brothers’. I appreciated those since it made it seem more real - like I’m admitting that my memory may serve me incorrectly. Something that happens to us all.

Months of waiting was worth it for this one - I wanted to keep reading each time I had to put it down. Educated is about surviving in a survivalist upbringing, and is a peek into how an education doesn’t just come from earning a degree in a classroom.

Next Read: Invincible Summer by Alice Adams