A Stolen Life

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Synopsis

In the summer of 1991, Jaycee Dugard was a normal girl with a mother she adored who was looking forward to spending the break from school with friends. Then one fateful day, while walking to the bus stop like she'd done many times before and within sight of her own house, she was abducted by Phillip Garrido, a man who had a history of abusing young women and girls. For the next eighteen years, with the help of his wife, Nancy, he kept Jaycee locked up in what was little more than a shack hidden at the back of his property and she was forbidden from ever speaking her real name. Often under the influence of drugs, he repeatedly raped her, sometimes for days at a time. She became pregnant twice and gave birth to two daughters she loved with all her heart, but she was, at one point, forced to pretend to be nothing more than their sister. Finally on August 26, 2009, Garrido made what seemed to be a critical error, taking Jaycee and the girls with him to a meeting with his parole officer. Separated from them, he eventually confessed to what he'd done and after nearly two decades in captivity, Jaycee and her daughters were finally free. A Stolen Life is Jaycee's story of what happened in her own words.

Review

A Stolen Life is author Jaycee Dugard's first-hand account of her abduction and eighteen-year captivity. As the summer of 1991 approached, Jaycee was a typical eleven-year-old girl. She'd spent several years alone with her single mother who she adored, but when her stepfather came into the picture, her relationship with him was rather fraught. However, she loved her baby half-sister with all her heart. Jaycee was making plans with her friends for summer vacation, plans that would never come to fruition. On June 10, as she was walking to the bus stop that was within sight of her house, a car pulled up alongside her. The male driver reached out the window and tasered her before she was dragged into the vehicle. From there, she wavered in and out of consciousness until they arrived at his home, where she was to spend the next eighteen years. The man, Phillip Garrido, with the help of his wife, Nancy, kept Jaycee locked up in a shack at the back of the property, where he repeatedly raped her, often for days at a time, when he was under the influence of drugs. Unsurprisingly, Jaycee became pregnant twice and gave birth to two daughters while in captivity, the first when she was only fourteen and the second when she was seventeen. Over the years, she tried not to think of her mother because it was too painful and she did whatever she had to do to get along with her captors and not rile them up. Oftentimes, she wondered, though, if anyone was out there looking for her or even cared, as it seemed that there were a number of opportunities when she should have been found but wasn't. After nearly two decades, Garrido made some crucial errors and eventually made the odd decision to take, not only his wife, but also Jaycee and her two daughters, with him to an appointment with his parole officer. It was during that appointment that things finally started to unravel and he ended up confessing to everything, after which Jaycee was reunited with her family.

I recall the media attention surrounding the abduction of Jaycee Dugard and perhaps more clearly her eventual recovery after eighteen years in captivity because it was so unusual and statistically improbable for a kidnap victim to be found alive after being missing for so long. I've long been fascinated by survivor stories such as this and the resilience of the human spirit, which is why A Stolen Life ended up on my TBR list. I can only imagine what Ms. Dugard went through during those years locked up, being used and abused, and even giving birth to her rapist's children. It's utterly chilling to think about and because the story is being told in her own words, there's a certain rawness to parts of it that make for some emotional reading. After finishing it, I feel like this book did give me a decent amount of insight into her ordeal and her frame of mind and I appreciated her willingness to share it.

From here, though, I'll preface my critique by saying that this is Ms. Dugard's story and only her story, and she had a right tell it in whatever way she wanted to. She didn't have to share it with the world and I commend her bravery in choosing to do so. However, I have to admit that after turning the final page, I was left with a lot of questions and a feeling of not being entirely satisfied. Ms. Dugard did keep a journal at least for part of the time she was being held captive, but she had to be circumspect in what she was saying in it for fear of it being found. Perhaps because of this, she seemed to be writing most of the story from memory after being rescued and eighteen years is a long time to recall every detail. Also, despite the narrative being written from a first-person perspective, I often felt like I had to read between the lines to figure out everything that was going through the author's mind. Maybe this had to do with her own sense of confusion at times or maybe it was a conscious choice to not share certain things, which is her right. I just hope that I correctly interpreted what was going on, as there's a lot of gray area. There are also many typos and awkwardly worded passages that gave me the sense that the publisher probably made an editorial decision to leave them in, perhaps to maintain a more authentic voice, but that left me with mixed feelings regarding the writing style. On the one hand, I could see how it did give the story the feel of coming straight from the heart, but on the other hand, it felt rather unpolished.

As I read the book, I couldn't help but compare and contrast A Stolen Life with Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland. The latter is a similar story of the captivity and survival of Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, which was co-written with a husband and wife journalist team and told a more robust and well-rounded narrative that included background on their captor and what happened to him after they escaped, as well as what was going on in the wider world as their families searched for them. With A Stolen Life, I felt like Ms. Dugard's focus was very insular and that the other things were missing even though there was an extensive search effort for her that occurred. While she did include what little she found out about Phillip Garrido's past crimes before he abducted her, I ended up having to look up the outcome of the Garridos' arrests and court cases. Thankfully they're both still in prison at this time and hopefully Phillip Garrido will stay there for the remainder of his life. In spite of my small disappointments, I did like A Stolen Life, and I wanted so much to be able to enthusiastically give it five stars. However, all these little things put together did kind of nag at me enough to drop one star. All this said, though, I still think that Ms. Dugard is an incredibly strong person to have survived all that she did and then manage to put her life back together and start an organization to help others who've gone through similar circumstances. I wish her all the best, and I'm definitely open to checking out her follow-up book, Freedom: My Book of Firsts at some point.

Note: Sensitive readers should know that there are a couple of brief passages where the author describes being raped using frank language.

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Jaycee Dugard @ Wikipedia

Jaycee Dugard @ GoodReads