When I was fifteen, I lived in a small village about a half an hour away from Cambridge. One of my favourite things to do was to take the train into Cambridge and walk around the university and daydream that I was a student there. I'd take in the majestic stone buildings, the perfectly manicured lawns. But my daydreams remained just that. In contrast, Tara Westover never in her wildest dreams imagined she'd end up on the other side of the world, one day dining in the vast dining hall, studying alongside the brightest minds, learning from eminent professors and ultimately earning a PhD.
Life for Tara was a true rags to riches story - but not the living-on-the-streets-and- becoming-uber-rich kind of rags to riches. She wasn't homeless, but she did grow up on a junkyard. The daughter of fanatic Mormons, her parents didn't believe in traditional school. Her father, for the most part, believed that the government was evil; therefore, he was determined to live a sheltered, self-sufficient life. His religious beliefs were extreme and radical. Believing that the End of Days was upon them, he constantly stockpiled food, fuel and supplies. He made money by sorting scrap on his property at the base of a huge mountain and his children were expected to help with the hard, dangerous labour, while his wife made homeopathic remedies and practiced for some time as a midwife. The kids didn't go to traditional school, nor were they homeschooled - they learned whatever they wanted to from books, from their parents and, most of all, from daily life. Those who expressed a desire to go to school had to ask their father for permission. Surprisingly, he granted permission to most of them, but reluctantly so.
Life on the junkyard was incredibly dangerous. Tara's father was mentally unstable, suffering from bipolarity, and though he was capable of showing humour and reassurance at times, he was generally a tyrant. He believed in his core that he was right at all times and he demanded compliance from everyone around him. He expected those around him to respect his commands, even if it meant risking their lives to obey him. The number of gruesome, life-threatening injuries the family members sustained was astounding. Because of their mistrust of hospitals, they treated most of their injuries with herbal remedies. These weren't just scrapes and bruises, but traumatic wounds such as burns, explosions, impalements and head injuries from incredibly unsafe work practices and numerous car accidents.
As if the dangerous physical labour wasn't enough, it was heartbreaking to read of the mental and emotional abuse the family members suffered through. Like most of us, Tara trusted her parents to guide her through life, but she always felt different, as she questioned the beliefs being fed to her and the lifestyle she was forced into. It wasn't until she made the incredible unlikely leap into the outside world that she came to learn about life outside her sheltered one.
By slowly gathering resources, trusting her curiosity and finding her way beyond the wreckage - both literal and figurative - her mind opened up as she sifted through textbooks, learning about history and philosophy and the power of the written word. It was a long, courageous journey of shedding the beliefs ingrained in her from birth, discovering hard truths about her family and looking at the world through new, brighter eyes. Ironically, it was the education her father so powerfully feared that ultimately set Tara free. But the mind is a fragile egg, and it's easier said than done to leave behind all that you have known and start a whole new way of life. There will always be threads that tether you back to where you began, the ties that bind.
Judge the cover: 4/5
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