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What I take from this is a correction, not to my memory but to my understanding. We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell. This is especially true in families. When one of my brothers first read my account of Shawn’s fall, he wrote to me: “I can’t imagine Dad calling 9-11. Shawn would have died first.” But maybe not. Maybe, after hearing his son’s skull crack, the desolate thud of bone and brain on concrete, our father was not the man we thought he would be, and assumed he had been for years after. I have always known that my father loves his children and powerfully; I have always believed that his hatred of doctors was more powerful. But maybe not. Maybe, in that moment, a moment of real crisis, his love subdued his fear and hatred both.

Maybe the real tragedy is that he could live in our minds this way, in my brother’s and mine, because his response in other moments—thousands of smaller dramas and lesser crises—had led us to see him in that role. To believe that should we fall, he would not intervene. We would die first.

We are all more complicated than the roles we are assigned in stories. Nothing has revealed that truth to me more than writing this memoir—trying to pin down the people I love on paper, to capture the whole meaning of them in a few words, which is of course impossible. This is the best I can do: to tell that other story next to the one I remember. Of a summer day, a fire, the smell of charred flesh, and a father helping his son down the mountain.

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Copyright © Tara Westover 2018

School desk in field: Getty Images

Buck’s Peak mountain: supplied by author

Tara Westover has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of non-fiction based on the experiences and recollections of the author. In some cases the names of people and other identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of others. The author has stated to the publishers that, except in such minor respects, not affecting the substantial accuracy of the work, the contents of this book are true.

First published in the USA by Random House in 2018

First published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson in 2018

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ISBN 9781786330512

31: Tragedy Then Farce

fn1 The italics used on this page indicate that the language from the referenced email is paraphrased, not directly quoted.

fn2 The italicized language in the description of the referenced text exchange is paraphrased, not directly quoted.

37: Gambling for Redemption

fn1 The italicized language in the description of the referenced email exchange is paraphrased, not directly quoted.

39: Watching the Buffalo

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