Tara Westover is an award-winning historian, essayist, memoirist, and bestselling author who grew up in extremely unusual circumstances, to say the least. Today, Tara is worth upwards of $1 million, but it wasn’t always that way.
The inspirational role model, Tara Westover, who fought for her education was born and raised on a mountain called Buck’s Peak, in Clifton, Idaho. Westover was always interested in broadening her knowledge and managed to escape to Brigham Young University at the age of 17.
The story of Tara Westover is an awesome one which she tells in her 2018 memoir, the aptly named Educated. To learn more about Tara and her mountain-side upbringing, as well as where she is now — and everything in between — keep reading this article.
Early Life
On 27 September 1986, Tara Westover was born at her home on the secluded yet picturesque Buck’s Peak, a mountain in Clifton, Idaho. Tara Westover’s parents — Val and LaRee Westover — were radically religious and lived a survivalist lifestyle that they forced upon Tara and her six siblings.
Deeply suspicious of all things government, schools, hospitals, and doctors, Tara’s parents led a largely self-sufficient life in the mountains. Her Mormon father, who Tara suspects is suffering from a mental illness, rejected the notion of education and instead taught his children “the rhythms of the mountain”.
The family was always prepared for some kind of uprising or political apocalypse, had bags packed for such an instance, slept with knives, and owned a scrap yard in which all seven children worked.
Tara lived an isolated life for many years. As a result of her work in the scrapyard, she suffered from an assortment of serious injuries that she wasn’t allowed to seek professional medical attention to treat.
Throughout her childhood, Tara was both physically and psychologically abused by one of her older brothers. Excluding her family on the mountain, Tara also had relationships with her maternal and paternal grandmothers, as well as two aunts.
Her Education
Though Tara spent her years being loosely homeschooled by her mother, in between working on the family scrapyard and helping LaRee brew herbs, she was able to study for and take the ACT Exam.
At the age of 17, and despite the fact that she did not have a high school diploma, Tara was accepted into Brigham Young University and was offered a scholarship. It took her about a year to adjust to life outside the ironic confines of the mountain but she prevailed and the year 2008 saw her graduating with honors.
Tara went on to attend Trinity College at the University of Cambridge and earned herself a Master’s degree. She also applied for and won a Gates Cambridge Scholarship and became a visiting fellow at Harvard University in 2010.
Her time in formal education was also a time of deep personal growth with Tara receiving the vaccinations her parents denied her at the age of 22 and entering into a relationship.
In her book, Tara states that her paternal grandmother — referred to as Grandma-down-the-hill — encouraged her to pursue education further than the one her father was providing. One of her four brothers, Tyler, taught her how to read and encouraged her to take the ACT.
Tara Today
Tara’s book has been read by the likes of Bill Gates, Barack Obama, and Ellen Degeneres so to say her story has been well recieved is an understatement. On top of being a beautifully written book, a big part of its phenomenal international success lies in how the lives of those who choose to live off-the-grid in rural America are highlighted.
Other than the fact that she is estranged from the majority of her family, little is known about Tara’s personal life and she prefers it that way. In the last chapters of her memoir, Tara mentions a boyfriend named Drew although it has been said that the two are no longer together.
For a while, she settled in London but it seemed as though the city life was ultimately not for her. And so she relocated back to Cambridge where she remained for many years.
After calling the UK “home” for more than a decade, Tara moved to New York and is currently a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. She engages in public speaking, is currently working on a documentary focusing on rural education, and has plans to begin a podcast as well as pen a second book — this time, about other people with stories as fascinating as her own.