What I Read -- Educated

K sent me a copy of Educated after she had finished up with it.  I saw the reviews when it came out and thought at the time that it looked like something I might enjoy -- as much as a sociological study as anything else -- but then it fell off my radar.  What a treat to have it show up in the mail!

I have not really gotten into the genre of horror/autobiography written by people (usually young women) who have escaped from plural-marriage Mormon families.  Thankfully, though this is a bit of horror/autobiography stemming from a childhood in a Mormon family, it is not plural-marriage focused.  Though themes of emotional, psychological, and even physical abuse surely overlap between the two subject areas, this book comes at extreme Mormonism from the angle of (not surprisingly) education -- and particularly how a lack of education both allows a person to be isolated by others and also itself serves to isolate that person from others.

I was surprised by how suspenseful I found the second half of the memoir.  By that section of the chronology, she has escaped daily life at her family's Idaho compound, but for various reasons she periodically returns.  Each time, a new and looming cloud of dread hangs over whatever is to come.  Like watching a train wreck, I couldn't look away.