The past few months brought me two great memoirs – seriously, I am in love with these books:

Educated, by Tara Westover. This is an incredible story of a girl raised in a chaotic family by parents who didn’t believe in school or traditional medicine. She describes working in her father’s junkyard, watching her mother treat severe burns and life-threatening injuries with herbs and hand gestures, and being abused by her brother while the rest of her family looked away.  As harrowing as her story is, it has a redemptive through-line, as she discovers school at seventeen and goes on to study at some of the best universities in the world. The best part however, is Westover’s unflinching chronicle of what it cost her to walk away from her family and build a life of her own.

The Book of Separation by Tova Mirvis. I’m a fan of Mirvis’ novels, so I was in line for this memoir from the moment I heard she was writing it. It exceeded my expectations. She writes so beautifully about the betrayal and heartache of leaving a tribe you’ve grown up in…and yet describes how the hope of something better pulled her, encouraged her, and helped her believe in herself and the God she was trying to find.

These books make me want to write :)