In a memoir reminiscent of Jeanette Walls' "The Glass Castle", Westover tells of growing up in a profoundly dysfunctional family where probable mental illness is left undiagnosed and untreated, where physical isolation from mainstream society leaves her and her siblings uneducated and unprotected from extremist rhetoric and paranoid fantasy.
That Westover is able to pull herself out of this environment and win academic honors is only half the story. The other half covers her less successful struggle to separate herself emotionally from a family that tolerated, ignored, and occasionally imposed the physical and mental abuse that defined her childhood and adolescence.
That Westover is able to pull herself out of this environment and win academic honors is only half the story. The other half covers her less successful struggle to separate herself emotionally from a family that tolerated, ignored, and occasionally imposed the physical and mental abuse that defined her childhood and adolescence.
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