American Mother

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What to expect

'An extraordinary story of grace, forgiveness and moral courage' Patrick Radden Keefe
A 2024 HIGHLIGHT IN THE OBSERVER, GUARDIAN AND IRISH TIMES
AN IMMEDIATE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

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.

Critics Review

  • Diane Foley’s faith and empathy … is nothing short of miraculous. And when, finally, Kotey shakes her hand, something an Isis man would never usually do, he seems to be quite as in awe of her courage as any reader will be

    Sunday Times

  • This is an extraordinary story of grace, forgiveness and moral courage. Bookended by Diane Foley’s meetings with her son’s killer, American Mother plunges us into the heart of darkness and then, somehow, on the far end, discovers unexpected light and hope. Diane Foley’s voice, as captured by Colum McCann, is one of the most compelling in recent literary memory. An honest, searing, heartbreaking book

    Patrick Radden Keefe

  • Powerful and devastating … reading this book is to be side by side with Diane

    Daily Mail

  • As an explanation of grief American Mother is elegant . . . What marks it out is how Diane Foley became an unlikely political activist . . . Graceful and compassionate

    Irish Independent

  • This is a book of agony, where the greatest of all may be Diane Foley’s ignorance of what really happened to her son . . . Remarkable, stirring

    Irish Times

  • She has put her extraordinarily painful experiences into a powerful new book simply but beautifully titled American Mother

    i news

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