Eight Bullets: One Woman's Story of Surviving Anti-Gay Violence.

• Author: Graff, E.J.

For years I have teased the love of my life about her rather ceaseless paranoia about attack. When I publish on lesbian and gay topics, she insists that my byline give only the state where we live, never the town. In the most liberal of settings - Harvard Square, for instance - she becomes furious if I accidentally forget we're among the straight folk and touch her as if we're in love. In our own house she will kiss or hug me only if all the shades are drawn.

It's a strange way to live for an affectionate person like me, someone who naturally puts my arm around friends and family, who would love to hold her hand almost everywhere we go. But I know enough horror stories, and have been the target of enough verbal garbage (you can't imagine some of the disgusting things teenagers spit out), to know there's reason to indulge her.

One of the worst of those horror stories - the nightmare of every lesbian I know - is Claudia Brenner's. In May 1988, she and her girlfriend went for a weekend hike on the Appalachian Trail. Hiking away from their first campsite, they happened across a creepy man, moved on, happened across him (toting a hunting rifle) again on the trail, and finally found themselves a shady, remote camp spot. But he was waiting.

As they began kissing and playing sexually, he shot Brenner's girlfriend, Rebecca Wight, in the liver. Within hours, Wight died. Brenner was critically wounded by five bullets to her face, neck, and arm, escaping death or paralysis only because a bullet heading toward her spine slowed when it shattered her molars. Eight Bullets - the number he fired - is the story of that attack.

It's a story I never wanted to incorporate so specifically into my daily consciousness. Eight Bullets minutely chronicles Brenner's journey, from the time she met and began dating Wight through the killer's pursuit, capture, and sentencing. We learn the details of every decision made on that camping trip, every step taken and word uttered. We follow her as she agonizingly leaves her bleeding lover and walks four miles to a road, where she flags down a passing car with a flashlight. We trace her helicopter trip to the Hershey Medical Center's trauma unit, her surgery, and her shocked recuperation. We hear about each step taken by her extended friendship family and post-trauma support team, which is anchored in stereotypically lesbian fashion by Brenner's ex-lover, Anne, and Anne's new partner, Gina. We learn of the surprisingly...