Educated, by Tara Westover

I disparaged the premise of Where the crawdads sing in an earlier review.  I questioned the ability of a young girl to stay alive alone in a marsh, educate herself, and become a published scholar at twenty.  I was forced to reconsider after subsequently reading this memoir in which Tara Westover basically does all that – but without Spanish moss and humidity.  Growing up rural Idaho, in a household dominated by her father, an off-the-grid fundamentalist Mormon survivalist, Tara survived not only a brutal upbringing but being denied formal education.   This gripping story of her, and a couple of her siblings, escape through self-education and an amazing will to survive proves that it is possible.  But it comes with much cost to family relationships.  Worth the buzz, but difficult to read.  352 pp.