Educated by Tara Westover

I wanted to get away from the junkyard and there was only one way to do that, which was the way Audrey had ...

Mary’s daughter every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning. Then Mary had a friend, Eve, who needed a bab ...

other girls knew it. I looked in the mirror at our reflection, at the twelve girls, sleek and shiny, pirouett ...

wearing, she will stay home.” On the Wednesday after Caroline called Mother, I arrived at Papa Jay’s a ...

The music ended. The girls glared at me as we left the stage—I had ruined the performance—but I could barely ...

that followed she searched for something else I could do, something Dad wouldn’t forbid. She’d noticed th ...

The song finished and I returned to our pew. A prayer was offered to close the service, then the crowd ...

The summer I sang the lead for Annie it was 1999. My father was in serious preparedness mode. Not since ...

sealed, labeled, and stored away in a root cellar Dad had dug out in the field. The entrance was concealed ...

Everyone laughed. I’d memorized all my lines, but at rehearsals I sat alone, pretending to study my black bind ...

tickets for the next night. It was all he talked about that Sunday in church. Not doctors, or the Illuminati, o ...

didn’t know, laughing with a group of public school kids, wearing big white shoes, khaki shorts and a ...

hear Dad’s reply when I asked what the gun was for. “Defense,” he said. The next night I had a rehea ...

Everyone at church had read the prophecies; they knew the Days of Abomination were coming. But still they’ ...

The longer I sat motionless, breathing deeply, trying to inhale the last scent of the fallen world, the ...

When January 1 dawned like any other morning, it broke Dad’s spirit. He never again mentioned Y2K ...

was giving way. I didn’t see any. She was the same taut, undefeated woman. The rest of the trip blurs ...

— I AWOKE TO BLACKNESS. Something ice-cold was running down my back. We’re in a lake! I thought. Some ...

— A FEW DAYS AFTER the crash, my neck froze. I awoke one morning and it wouldn’t move. It didn’t hurt, ...

feet. It was odd finding him in the house, this brother who was nearly a stranger to me. People in town seemed ...