Book Review by Anne McLeod
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (Random House, 2018)
Author Tara Westover’s early years were spent in rural Idaho, where she grew up in a home at the foot of a mountain. Life for Tara and her six siblings was far from idyllic though, as their father Gene (a pseudonym) was certain that end times were upon them and insisted that the family prepare for an apocalyptic world in which they alone among their neighbors would have food, gasoline, and other necessities. Their fellow Mormons listen politely to Gene’s rants before gently changing the subject.

Westover’s memoir can be painful to read, as her childhood included a series of car wrecks and accidents in the family’s junkyard, where she and the other children were put to work. (Only the older children ever attended school or even received the most minimal homeschooling.) Although he had always been an iconoclast, over time Gene’s personality changed, making him susceptible to severe mood swings and erratic behavior that repeatedly put the family at risk.

Gene’s failure to consider the most basic rules of personal safety results in serious injuries for most of the family over the years. His wife, whom Westover calls Faye in the book, is a midwife and herbalist and is often responsible for treating the family’s awful wounds, as they rarely seek medical care.

Westover also details the physical and psychological abuse she experienced from her brother Shawn, who terrorized her throughout her teens. To escape her brother and the hazards of working in the junkyard, Tara decides to follow her older brother Tyler’s path and go to college at the age of sixteen, despite her lack of a high school diploma. Her strong reading skills and sheer determination enable her to master just enough math to pass the ACT, thanks to some tutoring by Tyler and even a little grudging assistance with trigonometry from her father.

This second part of the book describes Westover’s struggles to find her footing academically and socially at Brigham Young University. Despite knowing nothing of history (the Holocaust and the Civil Rights movement were both new to her), she is drawn to the study of world affairs, something that her upbringing would condemn as “unwomanly.” Her world expands further when a sympathetic professor encouraged her to apply for his study abroad program at Cambridge University.
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There she came to recognize the value of her own perspectives, a radical departure from years spent under her father’s thumb. When her professor quotes a colleague who has described Westover as “pure gold,” she demurs. “This is a magical place … Everything shines here.”

“You must stop thinking like that,” Dr. Kerry said, his voice raised. “You are not fool’s gold, shining only under a particular light. Whomever you become, whatever you make yourself into, that is always who you were. It was always in you. Not in Cambridge. In you.”

When Westover grapples in the final part of the book with reconciling her past and present, her family’s world and her much wider world, she navigates a painful journey home, unsure what reconciliation might ultimately mean.

Educated is one of the most riveting books I read in 2018. Similar to Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle: A Memoir, with its harrowing descriptions of the effects of untreated mental illness on family dynamics, it also has echoes of Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood in its evocative description of natural beauty juxtaposed alongside a junkyard.
Educated is available for check out at the Moon Lake Community Library.

Quiet : the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking by Susan Cain
Educated : a memoir by Tara Westover
Long Road to Mercy by David Baldacci 
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
The Reckoning by John Grisham 
Unsheltered : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver
Dumplin' by Julie Murphy
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
Beneath a Scarlet Sky : a novel by Mark T. Sullivan
The hate u give by Angie Thomas
Kingdom of the Blind by Louise Penny
Julie and Julia : my year of cooking dangerously by Julie Powell 
The fourth K : a novel by Mario Puzo 
Golden Hill : a novel of old New York by Francis Spufford 
Fear in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope
Emma : a modern retelling by Alexander McCall Smith 
A secret history of witches by Louisa Morgan
Birds in your backyard : a bird lover's guide to creating a garden sanctuary 
Classic rock : 50 favorites for easy guitar 
First 50 Songs you should play on an acoustic guitar 
The Rock Classics Book 
Acoustic Guitar Songs for Dummies
The War of Art : break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles by Steven Pressfield 

deJoly LaBrier will speak at Moon Lake Commumity Library on Monday, January 14, about her new book, What Happened to You? A Guide to People Seeking Hope, Healing and Lasting Transformation (2018).

​deJoly has lived in the Mentone area for the past 20 years and has been a national speaker at conferences and in university classrooms for over 25 years. As an integration life coach, deJoly facilitates workshops on her specialties of Forgiveness and Trauma Recovery. She was a speaker at the American Mental Wellness Association’s national conference in November, 2018.

deJoly will share some of her personal childhood story of mental, physical, ritual, and sexual abuse, as well as her journey into wholeness and peace. “Adversity and trauma change the brain,” says deJoly, “and those changes inform our mental wellness and resilience. The brain is so resilient and can regenerate a new healthy brain if given time and attention.”

deJoly LaBrier is also the author of Diary of a Survivor in Art and Poetry (1997) and All Together Now: A Multiple’s Story of Hope and Healing (2009). Her books will be available for purchase and for signing. For more information about deJoly and her work, visit her website at dejoly.com.

The program will begin at 6:30 and is free of charge. Moon Lake Library is located at 4607 Alabama Highway 117 in Mentone.

A dark and wintry night will become warm, cozy, and fun when Moon Lake Library hosts a Community Game Night (for all ages!) on Friday, January 25, at 6 p.m. What's your game of choice? Bring it with you and find someone to play along. We'll have various board games available, including chess, backgammon, cribbage, Rumikub, checkers, dominoes, Chinese checkers, Scrabble, and more, as well as playing cards.

​This is a great way to make new friends, spend time with old friends, and exercise your brain, while having lots of fun. Bring a finger-food potluck item to share, if you can. We'll provide complimentary coffee.