When Diane Foley learned of the beheading of her son by Islamic State terrorists in 2014, “time didn’t just freeze. Time disappeared entirely from time.” James Foley’s murderers claimed they were acting in retaliation for America’s airstrikes in Iraq. The image of James kneeling in an orange jumpsuit, a black-clad captor standing triumphantly behind him, was adopted as part of Islamic State’s anti-American propaganda, and in the west became a symbol of the terrorist group’s brutality.
American Mother is Diane’s memoir, co-written with the Irish novelist Colum McCann, which details not just her son’s captivity and murder but his life before that. James was the eldest of five children in a God-fearing, all-American family who, after a period spent teaching, became a freelance reporter dedicated to telling the stories of victims of war.
