Educated summary

To say that Tara or her siblings were homeschooled is to stretch the definition of that term pretty thin. When she was four, Tara’s older brother Tony did teach her how to read, and for a few years after that Tara’s mom did teach her children some math and history. But by the time Tara was eight, any pretense of homeschooling had vanished.

At this point, the Westover children were left to educate themselves.

By the time Tara was eleven, most of her brothers, as well as her older sister, Audrey, had left home. And with so many helping hands no longer available, Gene was forced to shift the family business away from farming and toward the junkyard, where Tara helped him scrap old cars for parts.

Even though she was only eleven, Tara could already feel the desire for independence, and that meant finding her own job. So, one day, she hopped on her bike and pedaled her way to the local post office, where she posted a flyer advertising her availability as a babysitter.

When January 1, 2000, arrived and the world continued as normal, Gene’s faith was badly shaken. So the family took a trip to visit grandma down in Arizona, and the time in the sun seemed to revive his spirits.

However, on the drive back, they hit some bad weather that caused the family van to spin off the road and crash into a field. No one was wearing seatbelts, yet somehow everyone survived – even though Tara lost consciousness for a while.

When Tara was sixteen, she wasn’t sure how college could fit into the life that was being planned for her.

According to what she’d already been told, when Tara was eighteen or nineteen, she’d get married and Gene would provide a corner of their farm where her husband would build the young newlyweds a home. Then she’d learn about herbal healing and midwifery from Faye and have kids of her own.

When she moved to Provo, Utah, Tara didn’t bring many items from home with her – only a dozen jars of canned peaches and a bag of clothes.

The apartment she moved into housed two other students from BYU, and they gave Tara quite a shock.

During her first semester break, Tara went back home to Idaho, where she had little choice but to work in the junkyard with her father.

Unfortunately, during this break, she woke up one morning with a terrible earache. But this pain proved to be a boon: it taught Tara that some troubles can be avoided by accepting help.

By the time Tara was 19 years old, she’d qualified for a student-aid loan and could, for the first time in her life, live comfortably on her own, without financial worries. As a result, she was free to immerse herself in her schoolwork and continue her education.

Naturally, by learning more about the world, Tara was also learning just how twisted her father’s teachings had been.

What Tara had intended to focus on in college was music. But, with each new semester, it became increasingly obvious that her true interests were history and politics; these were the classes that she kept signing up for and looking forward to.

Even her professors noticed how motivated Tara was in class, and one of them finally asked her, “Have you heard of Cambridge?” To which she could only reply, “Nope.”

This time, when Tara returned to England, she was once again amazed upon entering the campus at Trinity College, where every square inch appeared to be both ancient and beautiful. And to make the experience even cooler, this time Tara wasn’t a visitor; she was a graduate student, with her own name written on her own door.

Now, for the first time, Tara began to feel as though there was a place she belonged. She even felt safe enough to work on her social skills and awkwardly introduce herself to enough of the other students until she had a small circle of friends.

Tara continued to flourish in her research at Trinity College. She was now diving into books on feminism, a term, until that point, she had only heard used in a negative way.

In her upbringing, men were the ones destined to be leaders, while women were the followers whose only roles were child-rearing and preparing meals in the kitchen.

During her PhD research, Tara won a visiting fellowship at Harvard University, but her excitement over this fantastic opportunity quickly soured. Her parents caught wind of Tara’s fellowship and, shortly thereafter, an email arrived that said they’d booked tickets and were going to visit her at Harvard. Not only that – they were planning on staying in her dorm room.

This aggressive move turned out to be their last attempt at controlling Tara, but they’d come to find out she was now too strong to bend to their will.