This is a monumental book in many ways. It's one of the few times that a victim of prolonged sexual imprisonment has come forth to tell her story, and the importance of having a record of this first-hand account cannot be discounted. Jaycee Dugard was kidnapped at the age of 11 and held captive for 18 years while a man repeatedly raped her and had her bear two of his children. She was miraculously freed at the age of 29 and, two years later, seems to be overall pretty well-adjusted and happy.

I've read a fair amount on this subject, but it's still very painful to read about Jaycee's story. One of the awful things about her situation is that her captor was "nice" to her when he wasn't assaulting her, sobbing and apologizing profusely, and telling her she was "helping him" with his problem. The confusion of dealing with that must do untold amounts of damage, since if someone is always monstrous, it's much easier to look upon him as the enemy. While it's natural to wonder about these things, it has always troubled me when I hear strongly worded questions about why victims in these situations don't try harder to escape. I think it's very difficult to imagine the amount of physical and psychological fear and confusion that these individuals undergo, as well as the coping mechanisms that they must use in order to simply survive. Through Jaycee's words, it's possible to come closer to understanding how someone in a devastating situation is relentlessly conditioned into doing a dominant person's bidding--and how her reality changed so much that she began to look upon being separated from her captor with crippling fear of the unknown.

While I am glad that readers have a chance to read Jaycee's story, it does worry me that it comes so soon after her release in 2009. Elizabeth Smart has similarly just signed on to be a commentator for ABC News, and it makes you wonder if Elisabeth Fritzl can be too far behind. I cannot even begin to imagine the kind of damage this kind of violence and depravity does to someone, let alone a child whose character hadn't even been fully formed at the time of her kidnapping. It troubles me to think that in our insistent need for information and our need for heroic stories in this modern age, we may unintentionally be harming these poor women with the pressure to present a pulled-together, picture-perfect image for our benefit.

But perhaps I don't give enough credit to their strength. While there is a great deal of pain in reading Jaycee's story as you relive her suffering, it is also impossible not to be moved by the resiliency of the human spirit. The joy she took in the pets that came and went over the years; her attempts to stay positive, chronicled through journal entries; her pleasure in the birth of her "beautiful baby girls." One of the things that touched me the most was the notion that a child of 17--with a fifth grade education--was determined to provide some sort of education and future for her two children by downloading daily lesson plans and teaching them herself. It speaks to an extraordinary spirit, as well as to the extraordinary capacity of the human heart.

The fact that these kinds of violent acts happen in the world are incredibly shameful and tragic. In sharing her story, however, Jaycee Dugard has helped many readers to see that human beings can and do survive impossible situations...and that it's important to appreciate the many precious freedoms that we so often take for granted.

A note about the book: This is an incredible piece of testimony to a shocking perpetuation of violence against a human being. I am glad that the publishers chose to keep Jaycee's young voice, which sounds unspoiled and unguarded in a surprising and touching way. There were some editorial missteps, however, that I felt detracted from the book quite a bit, including leaving in inconsistent tenses, confusing timelines, and switching back and forth perhaps a little too often between past and present for a fairly short book. Addressing these issues would have streamlined the book immensely, and it's puzzling that more efforts weren't made to provide a better framework for the story.

Additional Reading:
Readers who are interested in exploring other books with similar topics might consider Living Dead Girl, which is the best fictionalized story about kidnapping and imprisonment that I've read to date. I was NOT a huge fan of the much more lauded Room or the more recent Circle 9, however.