Tara Westover

“I asked him the dumbest questions I could think of.”

I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical

Mother called it “the art of shutting up.”

They were far away. Dwarfed by the mountain, hushed by the wind

Ain’t nothin’ funnier than real life, I tell you what

Dad worries that the Government will force us to go but it can’t, because it doesn’t know about us. Four of my parents’ seven children don’t have birth certificates. We have no medical records because we were born at home and have never seen a doctor or nurse.* We have no school records because we’ve never set foot in a classroom.

I had grown up preparing for the Days of Abomination, watching for the sun to darken, for the moon to drip as if with blood.

I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical

believed my family was a part of this immortal pattern, that we were, in some sense, eternal.

am only seven, but I understand that it is this fact, more than any other, that makes my family different: we don’t go to school.