Perspective

Perspective is important in autobiography, and particularly important in this case, when the perspective is so unusual. Dugard was kidnapped at age eleven and she spent her next eighteen years in captivity, living in a backyard in Antioch, California. A Stolen Life chronicles Dugard's time in captivity and then her fight to regain some sense of normalcy after her freedom.

Dugard takes pains to tell the story as she experienced it at the time, and only rarely does she include "Reflection" sections to step out of that younger self to provide commentary as an adult. Her childlike ignorance made the initial years of her captivity all the more frightening. She didn't know about sex and was only introduced to it by rape. She didn't know about pregnancy until she was herself pregnant. She didn't know about what drugs can do to a person until she witnessed Phillip first...