A Stolen Life: A Memoir

4.6 | 11,277 ratings

Price: 13.12

Last update: 07-11-2024

About this item

"In the summer of 1991 I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother who loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen. For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation. On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I dont think of myself as a victim. I survived. A Stolen Life is my story in my own words, in my own way, exactly as I remember it."

O. Merce Brown

Important Memoir on So Many Levels

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2011

*****
Jaycee Dugard's memoir of her life and her kidnapping, her torture, abuse and 18 year captivity, is important on so many levels.

At one level, this is a young woman's attempt to tell the details of her story and to regain her voice and her power. She is grateful to be alive, to be safe, and to have her daughters, her mom, her sister. Her story in its entirety--the actual details--go far beyond Diane Sawyer's two hour ABC news special, so if you've watched that (as I did), there is much, much more here. And again, the details are what add depth and so poignantly reveal how Jaycee FELT in the different circumstances she found herself in, all of which she had no or little control over. She learned how to survive and how to live as meaningful a life as possible (although this was very hard with rape, neglect, and abuse of all sorts). She did it, though, and has triumphed--with the help of many people, good therapists, and experiences such as equine therapy. All of this is described in the book.

Jaycee describes her daily concerns, her profound loneliness, and how she longed for things like a toothbrush, a bath, a toilet, to see the outdoors. She describes how her captor bonded her to to him, with him even trying to give her torture meaning and purpose by telling her it saved him from doing things like that to other little girls. And how great a "sex slave" she was. Her abuser's horrible "crank runs" --long days of her enduring various types of rape while her abuser was high and sleepless on crank. How after her baby was born, her abuser prayed that he'd never "hurt his child", which she knew meant "rape his child". Despite all of this horror, Jaycee's beautiful spirit shines through. So this is a hard book, and a book not for children because of all of the graphic details, but an important book for everyone else to read. None of the sexual details are gratuitous, but helpful and moving in understanding how a young girl saw her torment.

And at another level, this is a tale of hope and inspiration, a tale of Jaycee's tenacious spirit and how she survived. It can provide inspiration to all of us who deal on a daily basis with challenges and trials, probably none anywhere near as terrible as Jaycee's. Her spirit and will to survive are admirable and so worth reading about. She wants to inspire people and to encourage them to have hope in difficult circumstances.

And at yet another level, I hope that this memoir leads to changes in how the criminal justice system monitors sex offenders. So much needs to be reformed. I hope that this book, and those of us who read it, will help to facilitate and even demand needed change.

Lastly, Jaycee wants to inspire people to speak up and take action when they suspect, intuit, guess--that something may be wrong. It was two women officers who ended Jaycee's captivity--two women who trusted their intuition that something was "off" after seeing her and then acted to investigate and follow through.

The author's trust and hope, though betrayed again and again, still live on. This is a fascinating and riveting read about the human spirit, a book you'll have a hard time putting down. It is told in the present tense, so that you feel as though you're there with Jaycee. The book is organized into chapters in chronological order; at the end of each chapter she writes her reflections now that she is safe as an adult. In the Kindle edition, there are black and white pictures of Jaycee and pictures of her journal pages, not just the text of the hardcover.

Highly recommended.
*****

D. Merrimon Crawford

Powerful story of survival

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2011

In 1991 at the age of eleven, Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped by Phillip Garrido and his wife. Kept as their prisoner for 18 years, she survived unthinkable sexual and emotional abuse at the hands of her kidnappers. Contact with the outside world was severely restricted, when existent at all. Even her name was erased and changed for another one. How does a person, a child, survive? In her memoir, A STOLEN LIFE, Jaycee Dugard tells the story of her captivity, the reunion with her true family and her movement forward to a future of freedom. Her goals are not only to speak out against the silence forced upon her, against Phillip Garrido's belief no one should know what happened, but also to hold him accountable. She no longer keeps the secret. So often victims are made to feel shame for crimes against them, but Jaycee Dugard claims her life in this memoir, all of her life, and puts the shame where it belongs. She is not so much a victim as a survivor. Jaycee Dugard's story is a story of survival and hope. In writing this book, her stated goals are, that in speaking out, others might gain the courage to speak out when something seems wrong. She wants others to know they can survive tough situations and thrive.

In A STOLEN LIFE, Jaycee Dugard lives up to those goals and much more. The most horrible moments are not censored. One feels outrage towards Phillip Garrido and his wife as well at the Justice department's inability to stop the crime even when parole officers are on the scene. Readers should be prepared. The descriptions of the sexual abuse are narrated through a child's eye, thus drawing the reader in with a directness and rawness rather than a sense of detachment. While her story definitely holds the abuser accountable, A STOLEN LIFE itself does not drag a reader down into the morass of Phillip Garrido's psychology. One sees how he manipulates her, but in her ability to reveal and unmask the manipulation with her words, one feels the power shifting within her. What strikes this reader the most is the richness of her inner life even in the most restricted of circumstances. Her love of animals strikes a reader with a sense of genuineness and goodness, not only in the early scenes of captivity, but also in the more difficult moments of therapy as she learns more about herself.

The easy to read prose style is simple without being simplistic. Jaycee Dugard's powerful use of imagery captures the heart of the scene effortlessly without a stilted self-consciousness or over-analysis that might accompany a story of this type. A STOLEN LIFE is deeply inspirational in much the same way. By not sugar-coating or minimizing the events, the message of survival and even hope has all the more power. From the first page, A STOLEN LIFE is impossible to put down. Jaycee Dugard's A STOLEN LIFE is unforgettable and very highly recommended. This reader hopes that when the celebrity of Jaycee Dugard's story dies down, that if the dream of writing still appeals, she will continue to write. Her ability to use words is quite powerful.

A portion of thee proceeds of the memoir will be donated to the JAYC Foundation, Inc. The JAYC Foundation provides support and services to ensure the timely treatment of families that are recovering from abduction and the aftermath of other traumatic experiences.

Courtesy of Book Illuminations

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