American Mother
by Colum McCann with Diane Foley
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Pub Date 22 Feb 2024 | Archive Date 22 Feb 2024
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Description
'An extraordinary story of grace, forgiveness and moral courage' Patrick Radden Keefe
The English language has no specific word for the parent that has lost a child. There exist words for orphan, widow and widower, but there is no word that captures and conveys this tragic type of loss.
It has been eleven years since Diane Foley’s son, the American journalist James Foley, was kidnapped in northern Syria, and nearly ten since that day in August 2014 when she would learn that he had been murdered by ISIS in a public beheading that would ricochet in video around the world. A whole decade. Time rushes past. And yet, for Diane, that moment is unending.
In American Mother, legendary author Colum McCann tells Diane’s story as she recalls the months of his captivity, the efforts made to bring him home and the days following his death, in which Diane came face to face with one of the men responsible for her son’s kidnapping and torture. A testament to the power of radical empathy and moral courage, American Mother takes us inside one woman’s extraordinary journey to find connection in a world torn asunder, and to fight for others as a way to keep her son’s memory alive.
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781526663481 |
| PRICE | £20.00 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 240 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Meg G, Reviewer
A very moving book in which Diane Foley tells about her son Jamie, his career as a journalist and how he was murdered by ISIS in Syria in 2014. It appalling that the US government did nothing to help her and her family to bring her son home.
Stephen D, Educator
'American Mother' is a stunning work of non-fiction which describes Diane Foley's experiences her son, the journalist James Foley, was kidnapped and later murdered by ISIS in Syria. The book describes the pain of loss and the agonising experiences Jim underwent during captivity, but also Diane's determination to make something good come out of his suffering, both through her campaigning to improve America's approach to hostage recovery, and through her efforts to engage with Alexanda Kotey, one of the men who tortured and killed her son.
The book is co-written by the novelist Colum McCann and Diane Foley herself. The outer sections mainly describe Diane's meetings with Kotey in third person, while the much longer central section is written in first person recounts Diane's life as a mother, from Jim's childhood and his early work as a journalist, to his first kidnap in Libya and his second kidnap in Syria, to the aftermath of his death, Diane's grief and her response. As I understand it, these sections have also been penned by McCann but with extensive input from Foley - but they read entirely like they are written in her voice.
In many ways, this book reminded me of McCann's most recent novel 'Apeirogon' which also draws on real lives and focuses on the Parents Circle which brings together bereaved Israeli and Palestinian parents - as well as the journalists Marina Cantacuzino's work on the Forgiveness Project. All of these works offer a welcome and necessary alternative to an increasingly vengeful and polarised world: not an imperative of forgiveness but a possibility of hope, goodness and light in the darkest of circumstances. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.
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