Revenge, the book

I just finished reading Revenge by Laura Blumenfeld. Here is a synopsis of the book from the Amazon.com web site:

In 1986, a Palestinian terrorist shot author Laura Blumenfeld’s father. More than a decade later, Blumenfeld, a reporter for The Washington Post, decided to find the man who tried to kill her dad; she also wanted to learn about vengeance. “I was looking for the shooter, but I also was looking for some kind of wisdom,” she writes. “I wanted to master revenge.” Blumenfeld interviews a variety of people, from religious figures to assassins, about the meaning of revenge. The heart of the book, though, is her own journey to find the man who pulled the trigger. First she locates his family and learns vivid details about his life--he was a standout in his public-relations course at the University of Bethlehem. Blumenfeld’s own emotions aren’t far from the surface of this narrative. When she meets the shooter’s own father, for instance, she asks herself: “Am I supposed to shoot him now?” Finally she begins a creepy correspondence with the gunman, who is in prison. Their letters back and forth are oddly compelling--at first the shooter doesn’t know her real identity, though she eventually reveals it. In the end, Blumenfeld says her quest helped her find hope in a dangerous world, even as the final words of her book reflect upon September 11 and its immediate aftermath, when so many other Americans longed for their own vengeance. --John Miller

Laura, frankly seems endearingly wacky as she leaves America for Israel to look for her father's would be killer. The killer just grazed her father's scalp, meaning to shoot him in the head, as he walked along a Jerusalem street, and the gunman never fired a second shot.

Laura struggles to find out if she should seek revenge or forgive her father's would be kiler. She meets the killer's family and they adopt her as a member of their own family without knowing her true identity.

I enjoyed this book and agree with her values at the end of the book as she resolves her life question about whether she should see revenge for her father.

I recommend this book.

I listened to the book on audiobook with four cassettes.