Róisín Meets: Tara Westover – from the junkyard to Cambridge

Tara Westover grew up in on Buck Peak, a beautiful mountain in rural Idaho, in a household that was in a perpetual state of preparation for the End of Days.

Her family didn’t talk about the summer, it was called ‘canning season’ to them, a time spent furiously preserving peaches and other foodstuffs to stockpile for the inevitable End of Man.

Westover’s father, a Mormon Survivalist, lived in fear of the ‘feds’ throughout her childhood, but with a divine belief that everything that happens in this world – good or bad – is God’s will.

She wasn’t registered for a birth certificate until she was old enough to ask for one and because her father didn’t believe in either doctors or the public school system, she had no medical or educational records by the time she left home at 17.

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On the first Róisín Meets podcast recorded in front of a live audience at The Gutter Bookshop in Dublin, Tara Westover talks to Róisín Ingle about her memoir, Educated.

It tells the story of her childhood and explains how she went from bare minimum home-schooling in an isolated part of the US, to earning a PhD at the elite Trinity College, Cambridge in Britain.

Educated, by Tara Westover, published by Hutchinson, is out now.

You can find all our podcasts on irishtimes.com/podcasts.

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