Luck is in the eye of the beholder

Alice Sebold took an incredibly brave step when she was 18 and only a freshman in college at Syracuse University. She fought back against a rapist. She pressed charges. She won.

Alice Sebold did another incredibly brave thing in 1999. She published a book about her rape, how it affected her. How she lived after that. How her life was viewed in halves - the first half before the rape, and the second half after. She laid out her heart, her soul, her mind and her fears in the pages of "Lucky." Can you believe it. That's what the police told her when she went to police station to tell her story. They said she was lucky because in the tunnel in a park next to campus where she was raped, another woman had been brutally murdered. Alice got out with her life, but lost her virginity, innocence and ideals to a rapist that had the nerve to approach her on the street less than a year later and ask if he knew her from somewhere - with a sneer.

Alice Sebold's personal story is as gripping as the New York Times best seller she penned "The Lovely Bones," and it is just as haunting. Lucky is a book you can't put down. It is a story of strength that we hear so infrequently about rape. Sebold's book has the power of Trisha Meili's I am the Central Park Jogger and is told in a more riveting style. Both are books for every woman to read.

I give Alice Sebold credit for the book she wrote. I give her my admiration for having it published and I give her applause for having the bravery to have the world read it and shaming all those who still believe there is a stigma tied to a woman who is raped. Alice Sebold is not a victim. She is a survivor and a wonderful writer as well.