Let’s be very clear from the outset that A Stolen Life: A Memoir by Jaycee Dugard is a painful book to read. It is also a parent’s worst nightmare.

Some of us may recall that Jaycee Dugard is the incredibly brave young woman who was kidnapped in 1991 at the age of eleven and held captive, sexually abused, bore two daughters by Phillip Garrido, a convicted rapist and one of her two kidnappers, along with his wife, Nancy, and wasn’t allowed to speak her own name for 18 years.

Yes, that Jaycee Dugard. But the young woman does not think of herself as a victim. She is very much a survivor, having regained her life on August 26, 2009, the day she took her name back.

Just think about the lengthy period of Jaycee’s captivity. Eighteen years, nearly two decades, a childhood robbed, innocence stolen. How many of us could survive such a lengthy incarceration, for that was exactly what it was.

Fresh from her sweet eleven-year-old innocence, Jaycee was plunged into a nightmare world where she was totally dependent upon her captors, a husband and wife team that had plucked her off the street, stun-gunned her, stuffed her into a van, and deposited her into a ramshackle shed where she was kept handcuffed for some time.

Within a matter of days, Jaycee was raped. The first rape was the worst, but it was to become a regular occurrence. Jaycee didn’t even have the word rape in her vocabulary when she was subjected to the experience. And, no, the details aren’t luridly portrayed. They don’t need to be. What Jaycee does relate about her repeated sexual abuse is more than enough to sicken any decent human being.

What is absolutely amazing is that Jaycee was able to endure the horror of her existence for nearly two decades and still not lose her humanity. She never surrendered her spirit to her captors, never relinquished her belief that one day she would be free.

Yet, the thought of such a future remained elusive for years. Writing her memoir as an adult, Jaycee inserts more recent reflections about certain events that transpired during those long years that reveals an angrier side. “It confused the hell out of me,” she wrote in one of these reflections.

Having no physical contact with the outside world, Jaycee had to rely on her abuser to provide slim details of life beyond the walls of her confines. After a while, she was given a TV to watch, so Jaycee spent her hours in solitude (before the birth of her daughters) watching the tube.

About her two daughters, this is another accommodation that Jaycee had to make. She was forced to masquerade as “Alissa,” an older sister, while Nancy Garrido was to be called “Mom,” because, as Jaycee writes, it hurt her feelings not to be.

After eighteen years in virtual solitude, looking back on the stolen years of her youth had to be more than a kick in the stomach. Brainwashed and manipulated by Garrido, Jaycee made no attempts to escape. She knew, instinctively, that her survival depended on her being accommodating, by not challenging Garrido. But, as Jaycee herself challenges in the memoir, “Ask yourself, ‘What would you do to survive?’”

Indeed, this is a stark and compelling account of being held in captivity and surviving that is exceedingly rare. Jaycee always wanted to be a writer, although she pondered in the book what she would write about. Her words are as engrossing as any best-selling novel, her tale of survival one that approaches heroic proportions, like individuals marooned or injured and feared dead, yet survived by virtue of persistence, dogged determination and an indomitable spirit.

This extraordinary young woman was freed at age 29. She went on to found the JAYC (Just Ask Yourself to Care) Foundation, which provides support and services for the timely treatment of families recovering from abduction and the aftermath of traumatic experiences – families just like Jaycee’s who need to learn how to heal.

For more information on the JAYC Foundation, go to thejaycfoundation.org. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of A Stolen Life: A Memoir goes to support the JAYC Foundation.