Tara Westover: Why Tell Your Story Now?

In vivid and riveting prose terror, Tara Westover describes a childhood both harrowing and loving in her book, Educated. We learn about her upbringing on an Idaho farm in a devout Mormon family who are paranoid and live off the grid. No birth certificates, no school, no doctors, no registered existence. Yet despite all this, including abuse at the hands of one of her brothers and working for her family under dangerous conditions, Westover escapes and improbably, if not shockingly, goes on to graduate from Brigham Young University and Harvard.

This week on Just the Right Book, Westover joins Roxanne Coady to discuss her book and when to tell your story.

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Tara Westover was born in Idaho in 1986. She received her BA from Brigham Young University in 2008 and was subsequently awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. She earned an MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 2009, and in 2010 was a visiting fellow at Harvard University. She returned to Cambridge, where she was awarded a PhD in history in 2014. Educated is her first book.

Roxanne Coady is owner of R.J. Julia, one of the leading independent booksellers in the United States, which—since 1990—has been a community resource not only for books, but for the exchange of ideas. In 1998, Coady founded Read To Grow, which provides books for newborns and children and encourages parents to read to their children from birth. RTG has distributed over 1.5 million books.