Blessed are the people who grow up in a normal family and cruise through their childhood with all their needs provided. But some people have to go to great lengths even to get a formal education. Meet Tara Westover, whose life struggle is almost like a movie scene where the protagonist fights her way through harsh family conditions and emerges as a victor.
Wiki & Bio- Parents, Education & More
Tara Westover was born on 27 September of 1986 in Idaho, located in a remote mountain. She currently ages 34 years old.
She is the seventh child of parents who practiced their religion blindly as Mormon survivalists. Her mother, LaRee, worked as a midwife and also was an herbal healer. As for her father, Val, he was a delusional man who claimed to have prophetic powers. He forced his children to work in their yard without any safety measures. Tara was even denied her birth certificate until nine.
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Tara Westover (Photo: Haaretz.com)
Tara’s childhood was a pool of misery and unawareness. Her brother Shawn used to bully her, which even involved physical torture. Even her parents used to turn a blind eye to the situation.
Due to such circumstances, Tara never got the chance to receive public education. She was taught to read by an older brother, so her school was informal.
Her first encounter with formal education was a bitter experience, as Tara now recalls. She signed up for the ACT and attended the exam at a nearby high school which did not go well.
Her actual knowledge journey started at Brigham Young University in 2008.
After that, she got honored with the Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Tara earned an MPhil from Trinity College and Cambridge College(2009) in the following years. Then, she enrolled at Harvard University in 2010. And finally, the bookworm got her Ph.D. in 2014 from Cambridge in History.
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Tara seems to have broken through her family constraints as she is not wanted by her parents and half her siblings (Tony, Shawn, Tyler, Audrey) due to their religious mindset. Among her other siblings, Luke and Richard often make their way into Tara’s conversation now.
Her experiences as a child to a doctorate can be viewed in her memoir Educated. In the book, she highlights the power of education and how it affected her life throughout the years.
Personal Life: Married?
Tara’s childhood and journey may be available in every book store as she has described her memoir in Educated. However, her own life is still a mystery, especially when it's about her love story.
All we know is, she supposedly had a boyfriend in her early years of Cambridge University. The lad’s name is Drew Mecham. He came to light after he gave a positive review of Tara’s book online.
He introduced himself as Westover’s previous partner and shared her life from a third-person point of view. Apparently, he was there when Tara was getting threatened by her brother Shawn for choosing a life of education to family allegiance.
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Other than that, no additional credentials about Westover have caught the media's eyes. So, we are not sure if she is married or is just dating someone. Maybe she is single and is waiting for her perfect partner, whose quality fits her future husband.
Net Worth
Tara Westover is a highly educated woman with a doctorate in History and an author of the book Educated. We can find her writing on Amazon with the published date of 20th February 2018, and the cost of the book is $13.99. The sales certainly add to her revenue. Not to forget, her book was ranked #1 on The New York Times bestseller list. For her work, she also became a finalist for several national awards, including PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award.
Additionally, the estimated salary of an average writer and author is about $50,754. So, she probably earns a similar salary or more than that.