Educated: A Memoir

Westover reveals that Gene never mentioned Y2K again. Instead, he slipped into another bout of depression in the new year. After days of this, Faye said it was time for another trip to Arizona, so the whole family loaded up in a van and drove down. After a few days in the sun, Gene was revived again, preaching about the evil of doctors and how his mother should be using herbs for her cancer treatment. And, like the previous trip, Gene decided that the family should start their trip back to Idaho in the early evening after just a few days. Gene’s mother could not believe they were going to drive through the night after the terrible wreck they had last time, and she warned Gene about a winter storm that was brewing along their route home.

The storm hit at three in the morning while Westover’s family was driving back to Idaho. Gene took the wheel and drove fast and recklessly, as if to make the point that the roads were perfectly safe: “I’m not driving faster than our angels can fly” (102). The van fishtailed and careened off the road, and Westover woke up alone in the overturned van to find her family wandering around in an open field.