Educated by Tara Westover **** (of 4)

There are several reasons Educated became a must-read for so many Americans this year. Despite the author's claims to the contrary, Educated is a Horatio Alger story. Tara Westover recounts her escape from her rural Idaho farm family. Her Dad is a tyrannical, probably bipolar, bible-thumping authoritarian. Mom is an herbal healer who aligns chakras and delivers babies. One brother is physically abusive. She works in dad's junkyard from her earliest years and never attended school -- barely even any homeschooling -- until she enrolled in college. She earned a Ph.D. from Cambridge University. But there is more to it than just a story of trial and redemption.

Westover can write. She is nakedly honest recounting her self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and psychological pain. She is universal in her description of the need for a caring, loving father and mother, and the lengths to which she will go to win their approval, even as an adult. Her descriptions of her childhood home in Buck's Peak, Idaho feel accurate down to the ruts in the driveway and seasonal snow on the mountains. And her reporting of childhood accidents are so vivid that they can only be read with a tightly clenched abdomen.

There is one more reason I think Educated resonates with so many readers. More than 80% of Americans reside in or near cities rich in ethnic and religious diversity. Compared to the one-fifth of rural America, urban and suburban Americans, i.e., a majority of the reading population, do not regularly cross paths with anti-government, gun-bearing, religious zealots. For those readers, discovering the Westover family might feel as foreign as reading about Zulu warriors in National Geographic. Tara's dad's virulent fears of government conspiracies cause him to stockpile food, weapons, and fuel in preparation for end days. The author gives her father's uncritical, patriarchal interpretation of scripture a pass as the rantings of someone with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia or maybe both. But out here in rural America where I live the downward slope from mildly conservative to armed paranoiac is not very steep. A majority, truly, of rural residents in Northwest Pennsylvania, are in concurrence with at least some measure of papa Westover's hysteria regarding the outsized role of government, science, medicine, and foreigners.

Perhaps the most redeeming feature of Tara Westover's book is the implicit value she awards to the role of professional educators. Professors taught her to think critically, to question, to seek her own answers, and to value the search for knowledge and understanding even more than the solutions. In her case, she learned that the act of questioning and research could be more satisfying than the dictates of her father and his bible.