A Stolen Life: A Memoir

Here is Jaycee Dugard’s life story, in her own words, recounting the events surrounding her abduction, imprisonment and eventual return home eighteen years later. As an eleven-year-old girl snatched from her school bus stop by previously convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife Nancy, Jaycee’s horrifying experiences were just beginning. Aside from repeated sexual attacks by Phillip, resulting in Jaycee’s first pregnancy at the age of fourteen and the birth of two daughters, Jaycee also was forced to live in filthy backyard outbuildings and act compliantly towards her captors. She was instructed to tell her daughters that she was their older sister and Nancy their mother. Despite this psychological oppression, Jaycee managed to raise and educate her two daughters as normally as possible; although several times she does wonder aloud (to the reader) how her life might have been different if she hadn’t been abducted. But throughout the whole book we are in awe of Jaycee’s strength under impossible circumstances. This is a true survival story.