Educated by Tara Westover

I OPENED AUDREY’S MESSAGE. It was written in one long paragraph, with little punctuation and many spelling ...

small, confined to a tiny text box in the corner of the browser, but somehow they seemed to swallow the ...

When I read this, I imagined my mother as a young woman, brilliant and energetic, but also anxio ...

working for her, and it dwarfed my father’s business, and all the other businesses in the whole town; she, th ...

*2 The italicized language in the description of the referenced text exchange is paraphrased, not directly quo ...

When I next returned to Buck’s Peak, it was autumn and Grandma- down-the-hill was dying. For nine years s ...

came out I walked straight into a thin old woman with wiry hair and large, square glasses. “This ...

energy, feeding off the general bedlam of the house. Drew said he was impressed with the business, and ...

as not I’d find her in an apron, hovering over a roast with a phone in each hand, one a client, t ...

between us—how natural those words sounded to his ears, how grating to mine. It wasn’t like Mother to leave D ...

I didn’t stay long on Buck’s Peak, maybe a week. On the day I left the mountain, Audrey asked me n ...

something crazy. The first term passed in a flurry of dinners and late-night parties, punctuated by even late ...

rafters, above the massive Christmas tree that dominated the hall. I treasured the moment, taking pleasure ...

If you bring it you might use it, that’s how things are. A fistfight can turn into a gunfight real ...

might break the spell of waiting. In that moment part of me believed, as I had always believed, that ...

I didn’t feel particularly brave as I approached my father in the Chapel that night. I saw my role ...

seen it.” Dad said I wouldn’t be happy until Shawn was rotting in prison, that I’d come back from Ca ...

on my head. I walked slowly down the hall, taking small, even steps. “I’m going to bed,” I said w ...

tenderness—that would, finally, save me. I stared at the blade. Dad began a lecture, pausing often so Moth ...

Drew. I was nearly incoherent with panic but eventually he understood. He said I should leave, rig ...