Educated

Imagine growing up on a mountain with a father who distrusts the government so much that you're born at home so you don't have a birth certificate, you don't go to school because it's "brainwashing", and you help your family stockpile food, weapons, and fuel in preparation for the "Days of Abomination". That was the true experience of Tara Westover who describes her upbringing in her memoir Educated. Not only was she subject to her father's bipolar delusions, but her mother always defended him and her abusive older brother which may have been in part due to their staunch Mormon beliefs. Westover relates in shocking detail what it was like growing up in a dangerous environment in which she was forced to work in her father's junk scrapping business instead of receiving an education beyond learning to read. She then explains how she escaped to college which proved difficult considering she had no formal education. The author would go on to obtain a Ph.D. from Cambridge despite the pull of the beloved mountain on which she was raised and her desire to have a relationship with her family. Tara Westover's memoir is absolutely stunning.