Just watched an interview on C SPAN After Words with this author. This woman's life tops Wrapped in the Flag by Claire Connor about her life raised by her John Bircher extremist parents. Tara Westover was raised in a survivalist family in rural Idaho. She had an abusive brother and parents who didn't believe in medical care or formal education. She educated herself and broke free from the brainwashing which literally controlled her beliefs for all of her youth. She eventually went to Harvard and Cambridge earning a PhD. Those are incredibly impressive credentials for someone who never set foot in a school until she was 17. The book is only being released this month. I've ordered a copy. Vanity Fair: Tara Westover Turns Her Isolated Childhood into the Gripping Memoir Educated I can't wait to read it. And for all of us learning to write fiction: There's hope for me. And I'm going to have to check out The New Yorker Fiction Podcast.