If Tara Westover relied on memory alone, even she might question her bittersweet tale of growing up in an isolated, public school- and doctor-eschewing family ruled by a self-styled prophet-father’s survivalist gospel.
After all, today half the members of her rural southeastern Idaho Mormon family — especially Westover’s parents — dismiss her newly published New York Times best-seller, “Educated: A Memoir,” as a misremembered, if not predominantly false, narrative.
She writes of awakening one night to being choked by an older brother, angry with her “whorish” makeup and budding friendship with a boy. Westover says he then dragged her by the hair from her bedroom, shouting “slut,” “whore” and “bitch” as her mother tried to stop him.