Book therapy

If you want to read something different than a self-help book this can be a good choice. “Educated” is a beautiful memoir written by Tara Westover. She was born in 1986 on a remote mountain in Idaho and she is the seventh child of a Mormon family. Her parents believed in a patchwork of paranoid ideas well outside the mandates of religion, like if the End of the Days was always to hand. Her mother was an herbal healer and an unlicensed midwife while her father owned a scrapyard, where his children labored without the benefit of protective equipment.

Public school was mistrusted by Tara’s parents which meant her determination to leave home and get a formal education amounted to a rebellion against her family’s world. The author examines her life from childhood to University (where at the end she gained admission). She keeps trying to understand why her loved ones don’t support her important achievements but at some point she has to make a decision.

I liked this book because I discovered an hidden reality of the extreme American life, it makes you think about what we consider obvious ( which is not obvious for everyone ).

This book is #4 on the hardcover nonfiction list of the New York Times bestsellers, highly recommended.