Best Seller
Brothers and Sisters
Hardcover
$32.00
Available on Apr 13, 2027 | 320 Pages
A remarkable memoir about siblings—and how difficult stories are held within a family—from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated.
I’ve been called a liar so many times it feels like my name.
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.
I’ve been called a liar so many times it feels like my name.
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.
Author
Tara Westover
Tara Westover is an American historian and memoirist. Her first book, Educated, was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times named Educated one of the 10 Best Books of 2018, and the American Booksellers Association voted Educated the Nonfiction Book of the Year. In 2019, Time magazine named Westover one of the 100 Most Influential People. Westover holds a PhD in intellectual history from Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 2019 she was the Rosenthal Writer in Residence at Harvard University. In 2023, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden.
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