Educated: A Memoir

Westover relates a story that her father, Gene Westover, told when she was a child. “Gene” is a pseudonym—Westover gives her father a different name to protect his identity. (She also employs this anonymity to other characters throughout the memoir.) At the end of one summer, a family who lived near the Westover family on the mountain, the Weavers, was held hostage by “the Feds” (12), who, Gene claimed, demanded that the Weavers send their children to public school. Gene did not believe in education. In fact, he said that he would rather “surrender [his] kids to the devil himself” (14) than let them go to school. As a result, he was afraid the Weavers’ fate would also befall his family since he did not send his children to school. This is an example of Gene’s intense paranoia, which would deeply affect Westover’s childhood.

This story of the Weavers, which scared Westover as a child, crossed her mind as she prepared to sneak out of town with her dad’s mother, who she calls “Grandma-down-the-hill” (13). Each autumn while Westover was growing up, her grandparents left Idaho for Arizona to enjoy warmer climates during the harsh Idaho winter. The day before her grandparents left, Grandma-down-the-hill insisted that she leave with them so that she could send Westover to school. Westover felt afraid, but she also wanted to go. She agreed, and Grandma-down-the-hill suggested they leave while Westover’s father was gone to work the next day. Grandma-down-the-hill reasoned that Westover’s father would not be able to come to Arizona to bring her home until he finished a long-term construction project, so they would be able to get away with their plan—at least for a little while.

Westover did not sleep that night. Instead, she stayed up remembering the story about the Weavers and worrying about what her family would think and feel when they discovered she was gone. At five o’clock that morning, Westover got up and quietly ate breakfast and did chores while the rest of the family slept. Instead of leaving town with her grandparents, she quietly watched from the top of the hill as they drove away.

Westover describes her memories of a midwife named Judy training her mother, Faye Westover—also a pseudonym—while Westover observed. Faye was going to be a midwife’s assistant, although she did not want to be a midwife. It was Gene’s idea—part of his plan to make the family completely self-reliant in preparation for “the End of Days, when everyone else [would be] drinking from puddles and living in darkness” (24).

The first time Faye assisted with a birth, she came home pale and shaky. She said the birth was long, grueling, and scary. She told Gene she could not handle being a midwife. He replied, “This is a calling from the Lord, and sometimes the Lord asks for hard things” (24). Soon after, Judy moved away from Idaho and insisted that Faye take over as the local midwife. Faye delivered many babies and trained Westover and her older sister, Audrey (a pseudonym), in the process. At the time, Westover observed that midwifery changed her mother: She became more independent and assertive. She made her own money and, as the demand for her services grew, she even had a phone put into the family home. Faye also had to be very careful not to get caught by a hospital or local authorities when midwifing because she was “an unlicensed midwife” (31).

Toward the end of the chapter, Westover switches topics to discuss her birth certificate, or lack thereof. When her older brother, Luke, turned 15, he asked Faye to get him a birth certificate so that he could get a driver’s license for work. Faye decided she might as well get birth certificates for the rest of her children too, but the process proved to be extremely difficult. Faye could not find any documents confirming that the children were hers, and no one was even sure what day Westover was born. When they requested birth certificates from the Mormon church where all the children had been christened, the copies came back showing different birth dates as well. This all resulted in Faye arguing with government employees on the phone; she repeatedly told them that the children did not have school or medical records. Faye eventually got the birth certificates, but Westover remembers feeling odd about having her birth legally documented: “Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that proof [of birth] was required” (29).

Westover describes her mother’s and her father’s childhoods. Her mother, Faye, grew up in town, the daughter of a mailman and a seamstress. When Faye’s mother, LaRue, met and married Westover’s grandfather, a Navy man, she became fixated on constructing the perfect family. As a result, Faye grew up in a family that was obsessed with respectability.

However, Faye rebelled against that idea. In the 1970s, she chose to marry Westover’s father, Gene, “a severe young man with jet-black hair and an appetite for unconventionality” (34), and rejected the aspirational life of the white picket fence and gabardine dresses that her parents valued. Westover remembers that Faye’s stories of her childhood were tinged with bitterness. For instance, Faye smirked at the memory of LaRue fretting over whether Faye should wear white or cream-colored shoes to church, as if the difference really mattered. As a child, Westover felt that Faye was lucky to have escaped a life where she “felt trapped” (36).

Unlike Faye, who grew up in a town, Westover’s father, Gene, grew up on the same mountain that Westover’s family lives on, named Buck’s Peak. Despite this shared experience, Westover knows very little about her father’s childhood. Faye said that Gene’s father had a short temper and was prone to violence in his younger years; Gene’s mother worked for the Farm Bureau insurance agency in town. When Gene grew up, he developed a fierce belief that a woman’s place is in the home, and that women should not work. Looking back as an adult, Westover wonders if this fervor was mostly due to Gene’s opinion of his own mother. 

From there, Westover tells readers how her parents met. Faye and Gene first met in town when Faye was a waitress at the local bowling alley. Westover imagines that the first time Gene took Faye out to his home on the mountain, she must have felt a sense of freedom that she never felt in her crowded life in the middle of town, and “they were engaged soon after” (36). Unsurprisingly, Faye’s family opposed the engagement, and as a result, Westover’s family rarely visits her grandparents in town.

The memoir then shifts from young Westover’s recollections back to the present day. In the present, Westover struggles to reconcile the father she knows—a paranoid, weary man—with old photos that show him to be happy and carefree. As an adult, Westover realizes that the relationship between her grandparents and parents meant that she never knew them well. She wishes that things had been different when she was growing up, especially since she now thinks that her grandmother “was the only person who might have understood” how her parents’ paranoia and fundamentalism were negatively affecting her life. 

Westover remembers a trip her family took to Arizona one winter that took a near-deadly turn. During the previous summer, Gene was in extremely high spirits and working hard. After Christmas, he “seemed to deflate,” and a “darkness gathered in his eyes until it filled them” (41). He stopped talking and appeared tired and dejected, and by January, he could not get out of bed at all.

In February, Faye decided a family trip to Arizona to visit Gene’s parents might help him recover. Gene remained dejected and subdued during the first few days there. He did not return to his usual high-energy until his mother played a message on her phone’s answering machine. The message was a reminder about her doctor’s appointment the next day. Gene perked up began asking her why she did not rely on herbalism—a spiritual doctrine—and accused her of being in the Illuminati.

During the trip, Westover’s grandmother took her and her younger brother, Richard, to hunt for nuggets of black rock, which she called “Apache tears” (43). Grandma told them that the US Cavalry had ambushed a tribe of Apaches in that very desert. Instead of suffering defeat, the Apaches mounted their horses and charged off a cliff. When the Apache women found their bodies, Grandma claimed, they cried huge tears that turned to stone when they touched the earth.

After several days in Arizona, Gene declared that it was time to go home early one evening, despite the rest of the family’s protests. Westover’s older brother, Tyler, helped drive the family home but ended up falling asleep at the wheel. The car crashed into a utility pole, and power lines fell onto the car. Gene successfully removed the lines, but he was fearful of the police showing up and discovering that the car was uninsured. Gene quickly hurried the family back onto the road as soon as it seemed safe, even though Westover’s mother was badly injured. Her face was swollen and her eyes badly bruised, and over the next week, the swelling worsened. Westover says that no one realized those were signs of serious brain injury, and even if they did, there “was never any talk of a hospital” (48). It took Faye weeks to recover, but she was never the same again.

Reflecting on these events, Westover tells readers that she did not blame anyone for the wreck at the time but, years later, her perspective began to change. In the present, the crash makes her think of the Apache women and the “choices people make, together and on their own, that combine to produce any single event” (48).