WHAT GOES AROUND

The stories we tell about female violence.

- ALEXANDRA SCHWARTZ

When the journalist Elizabeth Flock was in her early twenties, she took a trip to Rome with friends. They hired a guide for a day, a bearded man a few years older. After showing them the sights, he brought them to a bar, the American kind that panders to young tourists with shots, and then to the Trevi Fountain, where they threw pennies over their shoulders. The next thing Flock knew, she was waking up in bed the guide's. He had drugged her drink. Now he was raping her.

What might have happened, Flock wondered later, if she had had a knife? A gun? In the event, she had nothing, and did nothing. She froze, as many people do. When it was over, she didn't go to the police; she doubted they would help. Her anger grew. Nearly a decade later, she tracked her assailant down online and discovered that he lived, amazingly, in the same city as she did. He ran a furniture store, which she fantasized about burning down.

She didn't do that, either, but now she has written a book about women who did do something. It’s called “The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice” (Harper).