Brothers and Sisters

Tara Westover grew up at the base of a mountain in Idaho. Then she left the mountain and wrote the story. She wrote about her father’s junkyard and being kept out of school, the family’s preparations for the End of Days and the confusion she felt when an older brother became violent. Then she published the story. The world believed her, but her parents hired a lawyer. What followed was a battle over the past. Who gets to say what happened? Who gets to be believed? And a more difficult question: how do you believe yourself when your own parents say you’re lying? Westover was able to believe herself because two of her brothers believed her. They vindicated her memories and affirmed her right to narrate what she remembered. “There is a gift siblings can give to one another,” Westover writes. “It is the gift of a witness.” But the gift didn’t last. The book became a phenomenon, and soon after, her brothers denied events that they had once confirmed, or they confirmed the events but denied their meaning. Perhaps there hadn’t been any violence, or perhaps the violence had been mild. Westover was believed by millions, but she was not believed by her own family. Brothers and Sisters is about the power of stories, both to transform and to tyrannize. It is the story of what comes after the story—after betrayal, after forgiveness. Of what it means to step into the world knowing the radical truth that you will outlive the family that made you.