The cover of Laura Blumenfeld's powerful personal essay Revenge includes the sort of bold, sensationalistic tagline that makes a book pop out from the shelf: "My father was shot by a terrorist. A decade later, I went looking for him…" But irresistible as it is, that hook also puts Blumenfeld at an immediate disadvantage, because it shrouds her sober intentions in a hot-blooded tone that's improbable and at least partially misleading. After all, a lot of time had passed since Omar al-Khatib, a young member of a rebel faction of the PLO, pulled the trigger on Blumenfeld's father, who was left with only a small scar as evidence; the bullet grazed the top of his head. In the interim, the shooter and the mastermind were arrested and incarcerated in an Israeli military prison (the former for 25 years, the latter for life), and the victim, a pragmatic American rabbi, forgave the man for his transgression. Given these circumstances, why should Blumenfeld be angry enough to even contemplate revenge, much less carry it out? Are her feelings genuine, or are they needlessly trumped-up and theoretical? How much resonance does her story really have, when Israelis and Palestinians successfully kill and avenge each other all the time? It takes a while for Revenge to get over these charges of solipsism—not just from a reader's perspective, but also from Blumenfeld's family and friends, who laughed off or dismissed her talk of belated retribution. At worst, the book comes across as dishonest and hyperbolic, as if Blumenfeld has whipped up a fact-based melodrama and inserted herself (a minor character) in the lead role. But slowly, the story evolves into something larger and more universal, incorporating the personal with an expansive, courageous, and empathetic meditation on the theme of revenge and how it infects warring cultures. A reporter for The Washington Post, Blumenfeld used her journalistic credentials to investigate the subject in such far-flung places as Sicily, Egypt, Albania, and Iran, gaining access to important figures such as former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who lost his older brother to Arab hijackers. While spending her newlywed year in Jerusalem, Blumenfeld befriended Khatib's warm family in the West Bank without revealing her identity. She also exchanged letters with the shooter himself, again under the guise of an anonymous journalist, waiting for the right moment to confront him. Her anger turns out to be more real and righteous than seemed possible at the start, but Revenge is complicated by numerous other factors, including subtle cultural divisions, her growing affection for the Khatibs, and the revealing specter of her parents' divorce. Ultimately, the book is a tale of two families, Jewish and Arab, breaking the cycle of violence while restoring their sense of honor. The message may be naïve—in Khatib's words, "People are so different when you know them up close"—but the prevailing mood of reconciliation and hope is a genuine and heartening rebuke to the current unrest.