Educated

“Our Jagged Little Patch of Idaho” 

Tara Westover recounts growing up at Buck’s Peak in the mountains of Idaho. Her father, Gene, ran a junkyard. Her mother, Faye, was a midwife and herbalist whose successful business included oils and salves, which she considered part of “God’s pharmacy.” Faye gave birth at home to five boys and two girls – Tony, Shawn, Tyler, Luke, Audrey, Richard and Tara. Like her siblings, Tara didn’t know what a classroom looked like. In fact, she asserts that she even didn’t officially exist, according to state records, until she received her Delayed Certificate of Birth at age nine. The children’s responsibilities were fluid; her parents often found it difficult to remember their kids’ ages.

Westover relates how Gene hated the government and believed in self-reliance. The family’s routines centered around preparing for the so-called Days of Abomination. Gene worked toward the time when off-the-grid living would sustain the family. Though he didn’t believe women should work, he accepted his wife’s income from being a midwife because her work subverted the government and supplemented his efforts in his junkyard and as a laborer building hay sheds and barns.