Educated

This was an incredibly difficult book to read. I came very close to not finishing it. Not because it was bad. It was just so hard to see a family treat their children the way Tara and her siblings are treated.

Tara was raised in an extremely fundamentalist Mormon family. Her father trusted almost no one, so the kids didn't go to school. They never went to the doctors. The family lived off the grid as much as they could, avoiding other people and preparing for the rapture.

A large chunk of the book is about Tara's childhood, and particularly the various injuries she and her family members suffered. For a while it was like every chapter was detailing a horrific new injury, and I had to walk away from the book for a bit.

But I did return to it, so I got to read about Tara's decision to go to college, where she blossomed and was finally able to cut ties with her abusive family. She goes into some detail about her ultimate decision to break with her parents and brother and the things it cost her but also the things she found afterwards. I'm glad I finished it, even though I wish there'd been a bit more about adult Tara.

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