Tara Westover has led a surprisingly dysfunctional
existence. Living isolated on her family’s compound I
first thought there was going to be something nefarious about sister-wives and
gun hoarding instead, while the topic of sister-wives is addressed it did not
take place within Tara’s immediate family. Though it was
condoned within sects of their Mormon faith. In Tara’s
home, her father was a screamer, moody, hysterically violent at times and so
was one of her brothers. Each could flip in an instant from
calmly chatting to her father forcing her to load scrap metal into a new
contraption he had come up with to cut the metal up. Unfortunately one of
her brothers nearly lost his arm trying to use it and when none of the other
brothers wanted to go next her father made her pick up scrap and load it into
the machine. She was nearly hurt several times but diligently
obeyed her father. Her Dad does not believe in the government
nor doctors so any time someone in the family was hurt, sick or needed medical
care of any kind – her father expected her mother to take care of
it. Her mother self-taught herself to deliver babies, sew
incisions and cure with poultices, tinctures and oils. She learned
plant lore and which botanicals were good for what and became quite savvy at
natural healing. She had friends that did energy and chakra
work and eventually people came to her wanting to buy her medicinal herbal
cures. So much so that she has a thriving business selling them now
internationally. The kids did not go to school, again her father’s idea
since he believes public schools teach nothing but propaganda and control the
populace by controlling their minds through what they teach. He saw
government conspiracy in most everything so he and her mother built a bomb
shelter and keep it stocked with a year’s worth of supplies for everyone in the
family. They believe a mix of the Book of Mormon and the Bible so
they are preparing for the End of Days as foretold in the Bible but also adhere
to the writings of the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, Jr.
Tara’s parents also excused the behavior of her mentally deranged
brother believing that whatever he did to her (shoving her head in the toilet
was his favorite move, beating her senseless, breaking her bones – pushing her
fingers, wrists, etc. the wrong way until they snapped) she
deserved. They never corrected him for the awful things he
did, but, they would mistreat her for being headstrong and agreeing with her
brother for what he did to her. Finally, she decided
that she wanted to go to school and managed to work it out between her parents,
though they fought her tooth and nail on it and others in family services
positions, etc. helping her out of the compound. Much
happens along the way and it is certainly a miracle how many things fell into
place and how many people were networked to help her along her
path. Having been in that environment so long she is noticeably a
bit damaged in her perspective (when witnesses in town would see her brother
abusing her and physically hurting her seriously, she would laugh it off like
it was all in fun – Why? The guy is a lunatic and needs to be put
away. But she always held up for him to outsiders and had long ago
given up trying to defend herself against him nor try to get sympathy from
others in the family. The brief time she received empathy from her
sister – it didn’t last long and now her sister sides with the family against
her. She didn’t really see how outsiders, (people living in
town) saw the Westover family until she made a few friends at school and later
acquired a semi boyfriend who, after witnessing one of her brother’s rages
against her first hand while the family went on about their business as if
nothing out of the ordinary was taking place, then Tara herself, though hand
prints shown red on her throat and her face was swelling and bruising, her
boyfriend refused to ever enter their home again, because Tara played it off
even then as though it was all fun and games and she was o.k. though she likely
had a concussion. What a family of enablers to an abuser,
yikes! Tara, while adapting to life in school, she was
shunned by some because she really didn’t have a clue as to how to behave in class
and was so at sea with the most simple of classes, she basically had to be
taught how to behave and how to seek help with catching up on all the topics
she didn’t know that she didn’t know, like when she asked in class what the
word “holocaust” meant as she had never seen nor heard about
it. She made a phenomenal come back, catching up
by reading up on history, working with math tutors, etc. She
ends up attending, Brigham Young University, where she receives a B.A.,
She received a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, She attended
Trinity College, Cambridge where she earned a MPhil and the next year was a
visiting fellow at Harvard University! She returned to Cambridge where
she earned a PhD in history. Amazing! From such a
rough start, with little or no schooling this lady went on to earn degrees at
some of the most prodigious universities there are. It
is a worthy read to see how it all took place. Props to
Tara. Divine providence and self- determination seem to have led
this young lady out of the darkness into the light. Good book,
though hard to read at times when she is being brutalized and
ostracized.
