Tara Westover grew up in a rural Idaho family that didn't send its children to school or take them to a doctor. Her father dominated the family with his extreme beliefs and exaggerated interpretation of the Bible. Her mother went along with these beliefs while becoming a herbalist and a midwife. Some of Tara's siblings continued to live a similar life. Some broke away and moved on, but Tara began a long and difficult journey to another life.
She wrote in her journal, "It's strange how you give the people you love so much power over you." Nevertheless, Tara began studying and learning how to think for herself. She read about negative liberty - the freedom from external obstacles and about positive liberty - the freedom from internal constraints, "to be liberated from irrational fears and beliefs, from addictions, superstitions." She attended many universities and earned advanced degrees. "What is s person to do, I asked, when their obligations to their family conflict with other obligations - to friends, to society, to themselves?" She became "a changed person, a new self." "You could call this selfhood many things." "I call it an education."
