Educated by Tara Westover

hand for the rest of the semester. — THAT SATURDAY, I SAT at my desk with a stack of homework. Ever ...

gentiles, on the one side or the other, but there was no foothold in between. The service ended and we filed ...

After that, I rarely spoke to Shannon or Mary and they rarely spoke to me, except to remind me to do my ...

and stilted. I didn’t tell her that I’d learned to read and write by reading only the Bibl ...

might have pulled a string through cheese. I’d beheaded chickens with Dad, clutching their scabby legs ...

The exam ended. The shutters were opened. I walked outside and stood in the winter chill, gazing up at the ...

back door and let it escape. It wasn’t fully healed, but Dad said its chances were better with the mountain ...

— IN MARCH, THERE WAS ANOTHER exam in Western Civ. This time I made flash cards. I spent hours memor ...

very much like a textbook. “That’s your problem then,” she said. “You have to read the textb ...

When the semester ended I returned to Buck’s Peak. In a few weeks BYU would post grades; then I’d know ...

truck and trailer both. With the luck of the damned, Shawn had crawled from the wreckage, ...

“Everyone’s fine,” I said. “But Dad says I can’t stay here unless I work in the junkyard, and I ca ...

studying for his GED, and one night when we were driving back from a job, he told me he was going ...

both blue. When I put them on, I barely recognized my own body, the way it narrowed and curved. I took ...

“It was an advantage!” I said, half-shouting. My response was instinctive. It was like hearing a phr ...

the sofa; I perched lightly on one side. The lights dimmed, the opening credits rolled. Charles inched toward me, slow ...

Charles was my first friend from that other world, the one my father had tried to protect me from. He was ...

I shrugged. “You must have smelled it,” he said. “It was strong. I’ve smelled it before. On you. You alw ...

favorite for a few weeks. “Wench, fetch me a grinding wheel,” he’d shout, or “Raise the boom, Wench!” Then ...

stroke left a dark smudge. I shouted to Shawn when the purlins were clean. He appeared from behind an ...