The familiar features of home—the ways of behaving, the beliefs, the values, the practices—that anchored Westover do not apply when she leaves the mountain. Westover’s experience leaving home and making her way in the world portrays an extremist version of something most people experience at some point in their lives: The process of learning that the world outside of home does not conform to the standards and expectations of home. As Westover ventures out and has more experiences in new places, with new people and new ideas, instead of reading the world through the perspective of home, she learns how to read home through the new perspective she gains from her experiences out in the world.

In many cases, home and the outside world are compatible—there are very few conflicts, cultural or ideological, for people who wish to move freely between being who they are at home and being who they are out in the world. This is not the case for Westover, whose fundamentalist religious upbringing ensures that once she becomes a person who learns how to live by the ways of the outside world, she will never truly belong—or be welcome—at home again.