This memoir proved to be remarkably different from the story I anticipated in the early chapters. Tara Westover grew up in a sparsely populated, remote rural area of Idaho, one of seven siblings home schooled by their parents, who goes on to earn college degrees, including a Ph.D. This was the story I anticipated, one of a poor homeschooled child who through hard work and chutzpah rises above economic hardship. This is but a small part of Tara's story.

As Tara grows up, we start to see the true dysfunction that exists in this family, unspooling in its complexity and ugliness with each episode, with each year. There is no home schooling, only endless religious rants and radically skewed versions of history offered endlessly from the father. We gradually learn that her father, a religious zealot beyond all rationality, is reckless with his children's lives, almost reveling in their accidents and injuries, all brought on by his poor judgement and cruel, sadistic insistence on obedience above reason and common sense. Every family member experiences life threatening circumstances due to this man's misjudgments. He is not simply stupid; he is reckless and irrational. The level of dysfunction is not apparent to Tara for many years, however; blinded by familial loyalty and brainwashing, she realizes long after that her mother and several siblings change alliances, believe stories of one another or disbelieving them, based on the shifting sands of self-interest. One brother is allowed to be physically and emotionally brutal and abusive of his siblings for years, tacitly sanctioned by the parents turning a blind eye, and later, reconstruction of family history to caste Tara as the unstable, even wicked one.

Sadly, the siblings who remained home and financially dependent upon the parents accepted the revised history, despite their own suffering at this sibling's hands; while those siblings who escaped, receiving educations and living beyond the influence of the family, saw familial revisionism for what it was, the effort to caste Tara as the corrupted, insane sibling, while the abuser was caste as reformed and therefore saintly. Tara later learns in her college psychology course that her father fits the profile for manic depression, then through counseling with a Mormon Church elder that her brother was abusive of her, the family covering for his behavior.

There are many turns in Tara's story that are barely tolerable, when the reader simply cannot believe she would rationalize her treatment and return, again and again, to such intolerable circumstances. Such is the influence of a manipulative family dynamic, where one believes one is loved and others have your best interests at heart. Instead, it was survival of the fittest, and survival may mean denying ownership of your very life, giving over personal safety and sanity to family, where it will likely be trampled upon, sorely used, and blithely discarded, as befits the needs of the family. Whatever is needed to keep father and mother intact, above judgment or reproach, as well as the chosen siblings, all other family members sacrificed for their authority.

This memoir is deeply honest and searing, sparing nothing. Tara Westover gives the reader her inner world, trying to comprehend why she would disregard her own safety and sanity for the sake of harmony, or simply shame. Her survival, awakening, and redemption are a great testimony to the human spirit. Her depiction of her upbringing and abuse demonstrate both the cruelty and perversion of parents' treatment of their children, as well as the mental lengths children will go to earn love from even the most dysfunctional parents. No amount of education can make you awaken to this; only when accepting yourself as worthy and distinctly individual, can one draw the necessary boundaries of self-protection and integrity. You will find yourself reflecting upon all Tara discusses in this book for quite awhile.