REVIEW: American Mother by Colum McCann with Diane Foley

Reviewed by Vicki Mayk

The late journalist Jim Foley once used a line from a Prussian general as a tagline on his blog. It encapsulated his approach to writing about war: “War is fought by human beings.”

Revealing the humanity of those who fight and die in war – both soldiers and innocent civilians – marked Foley’s reporting from the front lines around the world. The tagline would haunt me as I read the nonfiction book American Mother by Colum McCann with Diane Foley (Etruscan Press 2024). Every day while reading it, I would hear updates about the war in Gaza with frequent references to the Israeli hostages still held by Hamas and about the Palestinians under siege. When I returned to the pages of American Mother, I was reading about the experience of a woman whose son was taken hostage in a different war, eventually leading to a heartbreaking outcome.

The book tells two stories, forever linked: the harrowing tale of Foley, who was captured and beheaded by ISIS in 2014, and the story of his mother, Diane Foley, on her journey to make sense of her son’s death through activism on behalf of hostages. It also is about her attempt to understand and perhaps forgive his murderers.

The book’s narrative threads are brought to the page by National Book Award winner Colum McCann and by Diane Foley. In her acknowledgements, Diane Foley notes that McCann stepped forward to help write the story after he saw a photo of her son reading his novel Let The Great World Spin. As a fan of McCann’s fiction, I was anxious to read his first nonfiction book. I was not disappointed.

As the book opens, Foley is already dead for seven years. In a narrative told in the third person, we witness Diane Foley’s meeting with Alexanda Kotey, one of three ISIS terrorists known as “The Beatles” involved in the torture and eventual murder of her son. In spare prose and dialogue, the meeting between mother and terrorist bookends the story. The opening sets the stage for what follows: the life story of an exceptional young man who becomes a casualty of war. It also introduces us to Diane Foley, who turns to a life of activism following her son’s senseless death.

The opening and closing exchanges between Diane Foley and Kotey have no pat outcome, no moment of dramatic enlightenment on the part of mother or terrorist. Instead, it offers the reader the knowledge that there is a degree of humanity, sadness, and suffering on both sides. It is a reminder that in war, the reality often is that no one is a winner. After the opening, the book segues into a first-person narrative offering a more personal voice, that of Diane Foley telling her own story. The use of the first person, a standard for memoir, is effective for this highly personal story and contrasting it with the third person used in the opening works well.

We are plunged into the day when she learns that her son, already held hostage for two years, has been beheaded, his killing broadcast in a video for the world to see. It would become an iconic image.

The rest of the book includes a flashback chapter, with Diane telling Jim’s life story, up to the time he becomes a journalist covering wars, large and small, around the world. That he was willing to risk everything was underscored by the fact that he was held hostage another time, in Libya under the regime of Qadhafi. After recounting his early life, the book transitions back to the time that Foley was held hostage in Syria and to the time after his death when his mother becomes an activist, working to improve U.S. policy about hostages.

My only criticism of the book is that more of the action is summarized than I would have liked. It needs a few more detailed scenes with dialogue such as the meeting between mother and terrorist captured in the opening and closing chapters of the book. When the chapters written in Diane Foley’s voice move away from summarizing, the book is powerful and moving. For example, her retelling of her son’s execution, an imagined retelling pieced together from many details shared with her over the years, is an emotional punch to a reader’s gut. What mother should have to tell the story of the beheading of her son?

The book contains an unsettling revelation: Diane’s unsparing account of how little the United States government did to help free her son in the two years he was held by ISIS. The Foleys watched while foreign governments paid ransoms and negotiated to save their citizens. They were warned that they would be prosecuted if they attempted to do the same. That lack of response would lead Diane Foley to work to improve U.S. policy regarding its citizens who are held hostage by foreign governments – activism that would not succeed until an executive order was signed under the Biden administration.

In the end, this book transcends a personal story to tap a universal truth about the futility of war and the injustice of hostages taken in wartime. In a section about the history of hostage taking – a practice, Diane Foley notes, that goes all the way back to Biblical times – she engages us by writing, “Hostage-taking is elemental. We care about the people we love. When they get taken, it digs a hole in our hearts. We want to fill that hole back in.”

The profound truth of what Foley and McCann are saying is that innocent people, imprisoned and killed in a time of war, will always be a part of our world. Because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the news as I read this book, it resonated with me more powerfully than if I were reading it at another time. Once again, I realized, innocent people have been taken hostage and are being killed. This book reminded me that we should not succumb to indifference.

“Sometimes the world works, and a candle gives light to other candles,” Diane Foley writes in American Mother. The book she and McCann have written is yet another candle, shining light on the truth.

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