In 'The Furies,' a writer profiles three women who fight back against violence

Elizabeth Flock prefaces "The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice," with an account of being raped in her twenties. Her response to that assault teaches her "an unnerving lesson," that along with fight or flight, a person can react to threats by freezing: "I was passive, I let it happen, I dissociated and I was gone."

She doesn't go to the police, thinking that they wouldn't help, though in the years since, she writes, "Often, I've wondered how that morning, and my life since, might have been different if I'd had access to a knife or a gun."

That thought serves as the impetus for "The Furies," where Flock profiles three women around the world who took their stories of oppression and "transmuted them into power." Brittany Smith, in Alabama, faces trial for killing a man she says strangled and raped her. In India, Angoori Dahariya leads a gang of women fighting caste and gender discrimination. Mired in the Syrian civil war, Cicek Mustafa Zibo joins an all-female military unit to combat ISIS's "reign of rape and terror."

Linking these women is that all three "defended themselves in places where institutions failed to protect them," and "where deeply ingrained ideas about masculinity and women helped breed the violence they faced."

Flock fills each section of "The Furies" with heartrending moments, but her profile of Smith is the book's strongest. It's the story to which she has the most access and its narrow focus allows her to more deeply explore systemic failures.

Readers of Chanel Miller's "Know My Name" and Jon Krakauer's "Missoula" will be familiar with the shocking ways police departments, medical centers and courts sometimes treat rape victims. "The Furies" adds to that conversation, demonstrating how the justice system seems completely stacked against people who aren't "ideal victims." Smith is "poor, a former drug user who'd lost custody of her children." At one point, she commits arson. That she could get a fair hearing in a system reliant on binaries where "victims are good and perpetrators evil" seems unfathomable.

Beyond differences of place and culture, Dahariya and Zibo's stories contrast Smith's in another major way. Where Smith finds herself on the defense after shooting her alleged rapist, the other women gain momentum in their battles.

After her landlord unfairly evicts Dahariya, she fights back, forming the Green Gang, a band of women willing to beat oppressors into submission. She initially struggles to find support but, after years of work, Dahariya's gang grows thousands strong. Zibo's story highlights her transition from farmer's daughter to battle-scarred base commander. These sections are informative but emotionally distant. Flock conveys the scope of large cultural conflicts, but Dahariya and Zibo's stories lack the immersive quality of books like Katherine Boo's study of Indian corruption, "Behind the Beautiful Forevers."

"The Furies," though, offers a powerful reminder not only of the difference individuals can make in larger struggles for justice, but also of the limits of their success. Flock's subjects all have a legacy — they "found agency, a voice, and an identity." But, in seeking change, they "never fully escaped the oppressive systems they grew up in and continue to live under." And they get "no perfect, happy endings."

Vikas Turakhia is an English teacher in Ohio.

The Furies: Women, Vengeance, and Justice

By: Elizabeth Flock.

Publisher: Harper, 304 pages, $32.