Educated: A Memoir

The Prologue opens with Tara Westover describing the landscape of her family’s Idaho farm and the open land surrounding it. In this section of the memoir, Westover is 7 years old. Young Westover thinks about her family down in the house below as she sits up on the mountain and looks at the world around her. She imagines her mother making bran pancakes and her brothers testing the weather. Although she is only 7, she realizes that her family is different from other families because she and her six siblings do not go to school. They have also never been to a hospital and have no birth certificates. According to the government, Westover says, they “do not exist” (9).

But Westover knows that she does exist in a reality that is familiar to her, one where her family works their land and prepares for the “Days of Abomination” “[w]hen the World of Men [will] fail.” These beliefs come from the family’s deep Mormon roots, but they also believe that despite the apocalypse, their family will continue on. Although not educated at school, Westover has been educated in the rhythms of the earth and nature, the cycles of the seasons and days.