Michelle Richmond

Jaycee Dugard Memoir – A Stolen Life

“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.”

Simon and Schuster has released A Stolen Life, a memoir by Jaycee Dugard. There is also an ebook and an unabridged audio book, read by Dugard. A portion of the proceeds will go to The JAYC Foundation, which provides support and services for the timely treatment of families recovering from abduction and the aftermath of traumatic experiences. Scroll down for a link to Jaycee’s pinecone jewelry to support the foundation.

About the book : Dugard narrates the story in the present tense, beginning with the harrowing day of her abduction at the age of 11–her confusion, her terror, her absolute powerlessness as Phillip and Nancy Garrido paralyzed her with a stun gun, dragged her into the car, shoved her to the floor, and drove her from Tahoe to Antioch, California, to the dismal backyard compound where she would spend the next 18 years of her life. Scroll down to read an excerpt.

Each chapter is followed by a reflection, in which Dugard, who has been in therapy since her rescue in 2009, reveals her feelings about the ordeal now, as an adult looking back at the suffering of her younger self. Dugard’s writing style is direct and lucid, filled with detail; the naturalness of her writing is all the more impressive given the fact that her formal education stopped at the age of 11.

Dugard writes about discovering she was pregnant at the age of 14, and about delivering two baby girls in her back yard prison. She writes about how dependent she was on Phillip Garrido for everything. For most of the first six years of her captivity, she was locked in a soundproof room. Garrido convinced her that he knew everything she did. She lived in fear of getting “in trouble,” certain that he would use the stun gun again.

When her youngest daughter was two years old, Dugard was finally allowed to begin going out in public. By then, she had been so manipulated by Garrido that she believed his terrible lie: that she was safer in the back yard compound than she would be out in the world, and that her daughters were safer there as well. On outings, she avoided looking people in the eye; repeatedly, she mentions her feelings of invisibility.

Through it all, we see Dugard’s attempt to live as normal a life as possible–caring for a series of beloved pets, creating a school for her children, establishing small routines, and later, keeping the Garridos financially afloat by running the family printing business–often while Phillip and Nancy spent their days in a drug-induced slumber. She even keeps a journal, portions of which are presented–in her own childish print–in the book. Later journal entries reveal Jaycee struggling with many of the things any twenty-something young woman struggles with: her weight, her desire to eat more healthfully and be more motivated. These entries are extraordinarily poignant, infused with Jaycee’s longing, all these years after her abduction, to be with her mother; her desire to be free mixed with uncertainty about where she would go, or how she would take care of her children, if she were ever to leave; her confusion about Nancy and Phillip’s role in her life. After all, they have become her “family,” but she desperately wants to be with her real family, to be held once again by the mother whose face she can no longer remember, but whose love she remembers vividly.

Some of her journal entries include lists of dreams she has for her life. Along with taking a hot-air balloon ride, visiting Ireland, and learning two languages, she dreams of writing a best-seller. She has done just that; the day of its release, A Stolen Life hit #1 on Amazon.

Dugard also explains her reason for writing this book: she will no longer hide Garrido’s secret, she will no longer protect him from the truth of what he did to her. Others will know the brutality of his abuse.

This is a heartbreaking book from a brave and unbelievably resilient young woman, who now looks forward to a normal life for her and her two daughters. It is also inspiring; so much was taken from Dugard, and yet she has chosen to move forward without hatred. While she still experiences loneliness, she writes, she has fully embraced the joys of making home-cooked meals with her family, walking on the beach, and simply being free. Buy the book.

Having done a great deal of research into missing children while writing The Year of Fog, I followed Jaycee’s case with deep interest. One cannot help but be amazed by the fact that she survived and raised her daughters in such harrowing circumstances, and that she has now turned her efforts to helping other families through the J A Y C Foundation. In her interview with Diane Sawyer, which aired July 10 on Prime Time Life, Jaycee emphasized the fact that crimes such as those committed by the Garridos affect not only the victims, but also the victims’ families.

A note about Michaela Joy Garecht: Jaycee’s recovery momentarily gave hope to other parents of missing children–in particular to Sharon Murch, the mother of Michaela Joy Garecht, who was kidnapped from a Hayward, California, parking lot in 1988, and who has never been found. Sharon Murch is still looking for Michaela; read more about her story here.

Excerpt from A Stolen Life:

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 don’t 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.

View a video clip of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Jaycee Dugard here.

View Jaycee Dugard’s website, The JAYCFoundation, here.

A pinecone was the last thing Jaycee touched before she was dragged into the Garridos’ car two decades ago. It is “a symbol of hope and new beginnings,” she told Sawyer. “There is life after something tragic.” Purchase pinecone jewelry to support the foundation here.

Michelle Richmond is the author of The Year of Fog, No One You Know, Dream of the Blue Room, and The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress.

Related reading:

The Long Journey Home: A Memoir by Margaret Robinson

In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation, by Tom Smart

Gadgetry: Taking the Fitbit for a Spin

While looking for a pedometer, I came across the Fitbit. More sophisticated than your typical pedometer, the Fitbit, which you even wear while sleeping, is designed to measure your daily physical activity as well as the length and quality of your sleep. Does the Fitbit wireless trainer live up to the manufacturer’s claims?

Below, you’ll find the lowdown from the manufacturer’s website. But now that I’ve had a few weeks to use the fitbit, I’ll share my own thoughts, which are overwhelmingly positive.

What I love:

Simple to set up

easily readable display

tracks how long and how well you sleep!

battery lasts forever

Keeps track of the number of steps you’ve taken

Keeps track of the number of calories you’ve burned

Every time you walk by the base, your latest steps are downloaded to the website

Attractive, cleanly designed website which allows you to log your food, and shows calories burned vs. calories consumed. The food tracker also lists the percentage of your calories that come from protein, carbs, & fat

Cons:

It’s so tiny, it’s easy to lose. It needs some sort of tracker, like those keys you can find by clapping.

The base must be plugged into your computer in order to download information. The computer also must be used when charging. It’s a minor annoyance, but keeping my ibook on at all times took some getting used to.

Okay, here’s the manufacturer’s description.

“The Fitbit accurately tracks your calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled and sleep quality. The Fitbit contains a 3D motion sensor like the one found in the Nintendo Wii. The Fitbit tracks your motion in three dimensions and converts this into useful information about your daily activities.
You can wear the Fitbit on your waist, in your pocket or on undergarments. At night, you can wear the Fitbit clipped to the included wristband in order to track your sleep. Anytime you walk by the included wireless base station, data from your Fitbit is silently uploaded in the background to Fitbit.com.”

No false advertising there. It really is a genius little product, and now I have it on me at all times. Appendage, anyone?

Customer reviews on Amazon are overwhelmingly positive, and it’s priced below cringe factor at the psychologically magic number of $99.95. Personally, I think it’s fascinating to know just how much I’m really sleeping, not to mention how little I’m really moving. I exercise almost daily, but when I’m not on the treadmill or doing ill-advised moves with the kettlebell, I’m generally sitting in front of my computer, writing, the ultimate in sedentary occupations. If anything, the fitbit has inspired me to walk around the block and down to the pool while plotting my new novel.

Note: I have not received any compensation from Fitbit for this review. I bought that bad boy on my own and have no personal or professional affiliation with the company or any of its employees.

Three Gorges Dam: On Culture and Forgetting

In 1998, while working in Beijing, I became fascinated by the Three Gorges Dam, a massive project to dam up Asia’s longest river. Envisioned by Sun Yat-Sen in 1919 as a symbol of Chinese power and finally completed nearly a century later, the dam that was heralded by the Chinese government not only as a major source of hydraulic power but also as as an unmatched feat of engineering. Yet the dam promised from the beginning be an environmental and cultural disaster on a nearly unheard-of scale. My research on the subject, along with a thought-provoking encounter with a Chinese geologist on a bus bound for Xian in the summer of my 28th year, inspired my first novel, Dream of the Blue Room. Published in 2003 and set against the backdrop of the Yangtze River during the dam’s construction, the novel centers not only on the narrator’s personal story, but also on the larger story of the dam and the massive erasure of personal and national narratives brought about by the flooding of hundreds of ancient cities. As the narrator travels down the river, she witnesses cities being abandoned, ancient structures giving way to the rising waters of the Yangtze.

At the time my novel was published, the dam had yet to be completed. Criticizing the dam was still unwise for Chinese citizens, who could face severe repercussions for speaking up about a project that had such widespread government support. But as early as 2007,the government run Xinhua News Agency reported that, if problems weren’t corrected, the dam could lead to environmental catastrophe. And this week, The Washington Post reports that the Chinese government is finally admitting its mistakes, as droughts and other disasters are now being blamed on the dam.

As the crisis has worsened in recent weeks, the spotlight has returned to the dam, releasing a torrent of pent-up blame on the project, not only for the drought but also for recent earthquakes, pollution and the hardship faced by the 1.4 million residents who have been relocated for its construction… As a result, in the past two weeks, the government has made rare admissions of mistakes with the project. The most dramatic came last month when the State Council, led by Premier Wen Jiabao, acknowledged “urgent problems,” in a statement intended to counter mounting public anger.

Novels are as much a record of the times we live in as they are a reflection of the author’s experiences in, and fears about, the world, an expression of the writer’s obsessions. Dream of the Blue Room was my first book-length foray into the subject of memory. A massive inundation of water, one of nature’s most powerful forces, threatens to destroy a nation’s collective memory. The Three Gorges as they appear in my novel no longer exist. Many of the towns mentioned in the book are now buried beneath a massive, stagnant lake, their inhabitants eking out an existence far away from the homes where their families lived for generations. The dam threatens the loss of memory on a massive scale. But it may also be the starting point of a new kind of oral history. When the physical things that define us are gone, what are we left with but story? Stories, after all, do not live in things. They live in the words we pass down from one generation to the next. This is not to say that a loss of place by human folly is acceptable, or justifiable. But erasure, sadly, is in our nature, as is the hubris that precedes it.

Green Apple’s Book vs. Kindle

The Green Apple Guys take on Kindle contracts, pacemaker problems, electric shock, bathtub readiness, and other burning issues in their awesomely fantastic youtube series, Book vs. Kindle. Round 2 features No One You Know.