Emmy-winning journalist and author Elizabeth Flock examines how three women used violence and lethal force to gain power, safety, and freedom when the institutions meant to protect them—government, police, courts—failed to do so. Flock’s new book The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice (Harper, 2024) follows Brittany Smith, a woman from Alabama, who killed a man she said raped her but was denied the protection of the Stand-Your-Ground law; Angoori Dahariya, leader of a gang in Uttar Pradesh, India, dedicated to avenging victims of domestic abuse; and Cicek Mustafa Zibo, a fighter in an all-female militia that battled ISIS in Syria. From the publisher: “Through Flock’s propulsive prose and remarkable research on the ground—embedded with families, communities, and organizations in America, India, and Syria—The Furies examines, with exquisite nuance, whether the fight for women’s safety is fully possible without force. Do these women’s acts of vengeance help or hurt them, and ultimately, all women? Did they create lasting change in entrenched misogynistic and paternalistic systems?” Flock is 2008 graduate of Boston College. Her work has been featured in the New Yorker, the New York Times, and The Atlantic, and on PBS NewsHour and Netflix, among other outlets. She is the host of the podcast Blind Plea and author of The Heart is a Shifting Sea, an examination of love and marriage in India.