American Mother

In late 2021, Diane Foley - mother of the murdered American journalist Jim Foley - sat at a table across from her son's killer, Alexanda Kotey, a member of the ISIS group known as "The Beatles," who had pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of her son seven years before. Kotey was about to go serve life imprisonment and this was Diane's one and only chance to talk to the man who had been involved with brutally taking her son's last breath. What would she say to the killer? What name could she give him? How to look him in the eye? What would he reveal to her? Might she even be able to summon forgiveness for a man well known as a terrorist, a monster?

So begins American Mother - an incredible non-fiction account of Diane Foley's life, one which reads alternately like a thriller, a biography, a mystery, a memoir, and a literary examination of grace.

This is the story of Diane Foley - a retired nurse practitioner, a parent of five, an American mother - in search not only for justice but for answers that could only be found through dogged, empathetic, spiritual enquiry. She is a fighter and a listener. She is an advocate and a vessel for mercy. She goes deep into the den of iniquity that is one violent man's sorry existence and comes out of the wreckage whole, more fully human, more complete in hard-won faith in the goodness of life. At the same time, Diane examines her son's relentless search for meaning and moral courage.

Diane looks back on the early days when Jim was a child and she charts his journey through school and university, to journalism, and out to the killing fields of the world where he reports with indefatigable determination and insight on the plight of those caught up in the agonies of war. She guides us through her family history and the difficulties they face when her son is captured. And she also charts the tenacity it takes to turn her grief into grace as she seeks to give voice to those who are still being kidnapped and wrongfully detained around the world.

To take us with her on this incredible journey is National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann who channels Diane Foley's singular voice and its astounding capacity for faith and hope. The result is a work of deep humanity calling us on a journey of strength, resilience, and radical empathy. Its pages shine as a beacon in the dark of our broken times. Diane finds connection in a world torn asunder, managing to keep the dead alive by fighting in the name of her son. She learns lessons the hard way. She speaks with clarity and openness. She recognizes the volatile potency of forgiveness. She reaches for meaning that seems to be out of reach until, upon reaching it, she is able to illustrate that the world can still afford hope.

Few journeys are more worthy than this and, in this astonishing book, we are all invited to celebrate the lives of those who are never, in the end, gone.