American Mother

National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann channels Diane Foley's voice as she tells her story, as the mother of American journalist Jim Foley - in search of answers, beyond justice, found through dogged, empathetic, spiritual enquiry.

In late 2021, Diane Foley sat at a table across from her son's killer, Alexanda Kotey, a member of the ISIS group known as "The Beatles" who plead 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 chance to talk to the man who had been involved with brutally taking her son's last breath. What would she say to his killer? What would he reveal to her? Might she even be able to summon forgiveness for him?

So begins American Mother-- which reads alternately like a thriller, a biography, a mystery, a memoir, and a literary examination of grace.

Diane looks back on the early days when Jim was a child and his journey to journalism, and 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 faced when Jim was 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.

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.

Author: Colum McCann, Diane Foley
Publisher: Etruscan Press
Published: 03/05/2024
Pages: 200
Binding Type: Hardcover
ISBN: 9798985882452

About the Author
Diane M. Foley is President and Founder of the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation (JWFLF) which she created in September 2014 less than a month after the public beheading by ISIS in Syria of her son James W. Foley, an American freelance conflict journalist.
In 2015, she led JWFLF efforts to fund the start of Hostage US and the international Alliance for a Culture of Safety. She actively participated in the National Counterterrorism Center hostage review which culminated in the Presidential Policy Directive-30. This directive created the current US hostage enterprise consisting of an interagency Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs and a White House Hostage Response Group to free innocent Americans taken hostage or wrongfully detained abroad. JWFLF was instrumental in the passage of the Robert Levinson Hostage Taking and Accountability Act.
She has been a tireless hostage, wrongful detainee and family advocate within the US hostage enterprise, Congress, and every presidential administration since 2014. She has raised awareness of international hostage taking and wrongful detention using the award-winning documentary, Jim, the James Foley Story, opinion pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today and media interviews.Diane has spoken on the power of forgiveness in various faith communities and was included in 200 Women, edited by Geoff Blackwell.
She is the author of a chapter called, "Life For A Voice: the Work of Journalist James W. Foley through the Eyes of his Family" in Living Precariously edited by Christina Lee and Susan Leong to been published in 2023 and the co-author with writer Colum McCann of American Mother.
Previously, Diane worked as a community health nurse and as a family nurse practitioner for 18 years. She received both her undergraduate and master's degrees from the University of New Hampshire.
She is active in her Roman Catholic parish of St Katherine Drexel in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband, Dr. John W. Foley. She is the mother of five children.