Tara Westover’s “Educated” gets compared to AJ Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy.” Vance was first, but not better. Timothy Egan, in the New York Times, says: “The two great literary bookends of President Trump’s half-term of grift and chaos have come from survivors of the most broken white communities that helped put him in office. They also show us the best way out of the basement of American despair.”
If you can only read one of these books, read Westover. She is the daughter of survivalists who reject schooling, who reject medicine, who, despite striving for God (not quite right – because of certainty about God’s will) reject decency toward women.
Westover’s book, like Vance’s, is about escape. Vance’s escape is from a debilitating culture. Westover’s is from a dangerous one.