RAINY DAY EXCERPTS: “EDUCATED”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, originally hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea and now hosted by I’d Rather Be at the Beach; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s feature is a recent library book:  Educated (e-book), by Tara Westover, an account of the struggle for self-invention. It is a tale of fierce family loyalty, and of the grief that comes from severing one’s closest ties. With the acute insight that distinguishes all great writers, Westover has crafted a universal coming-of-age story that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one’s life through new eyes, and the will to change it.

 

 

 

Intro:  (Prologue)

I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn.  The wind soars, whipping my  hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt.  The gales are strong this close to the mountain, as if the peak itself is exhaling.  Down below, the valley is peaceful, undisturbed.  Meanwhile our farm dances:  the heavy conifer trees sway slowly, while the sagebrush and thistles quiver, bowing before every puff and pocket of air.  Behind me a gentle hill slops upward and stitches itself to the mountain base.  If I look up, I can see the dark form of the Indian Princess.

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Teaser:  I awoke one morning in August to find Tyler packing his clothes, books and CDs into boxes.  He’d nearly finished by the time we sat down to breakfast.  I ate quickly, then went into his room and looked at his shelves, now empty except for a single CD, the black one with the image of people dressed in white, which I now recognized as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. (p. 66).

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Synopsis:  Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her “head-for-the-hills” bag. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged metal in her father’s junkyard.

Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when an older brother became violent.

When another brother got himself into college and came back with news of the world beyond the mountain, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. There, she studied psychology, politics, philosophy, and history, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.

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What do you think?  Would you keep reading?

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