Any book seriously recommended by Patrick Radden Keefe needs to be investigated. The author of Say Nothing, his peerless study of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and Empire of Pain, his never-less-than shocking investigation into the Sackler family, is one of the most formidable investigative journalists working today, so if he is prepared to have his name used to help sell someone else’s work, I would be minded to take notice. I remember the first time I saw Radden Keefe speak, at the Borris Festival in Ireland two years ago, and I urgently made a note every time he referenced an influence or a book I hadn’t heard of.
This is what he’s done with American Mother, by the equally celebrated writer, Colum McCann. It is an appalling, fascinating tale, exploring the life, kidnapping, beheading and afterlife of James Foley, who was murdered by IS in Syria a decade ago. Written with the help of Foley’s mother, Diane, and focusing on her determination to meet her son’s killer, it is a searing, mournful and tragic story, one that is as compelling as it is sad.
Losing your child must be one of life’s most unforgivable possibilities, a loss that is almost invisible, sometimes deliberately so. It’s one of those things that people don’t talk about, but because to contemplate it seems unfathomable. Too much to think out. Beyond our coping mechanisms.
The English language has no specific word for a parent who has lost a child
Incongruously, the English language has no specific word for a parent who has lost a child. There obviously exist words for orphan, widow and widower, but there is no word that defines this particular kind of loss, and certainly none that captures or conveys the tragedy. It is now 11 years since Diane Foley’s son, the American journalist James Foley, was kidnapped in northern Syria, and nearly 10 since that day in August 2014 when she would learn that he had been murdered in a public beheading that would ricochet on video around the world, an appalling internet “sensation” that changed the way conflict was contextualised by the media.
As McCann says, “A whole decade. Time rushes past. And yet, for Diane, that moment is unending.” In American Mother, McCann tells Diane’s story as well as her son’s, as she recalls the months of his captivity, the enormous efforts made to bring him home and the awful days following his death. She would soon come face to face with one of the men responsible for her son’s kidnapping and torture, and it is these passages in particular which make this book so engrossing. McCann’s job was to attempt to take us into one woman’s cycle of torment, accentuated by her desire to “find connection in a world torn asunder, and to fight for others as a way to keep her son’s memory alive”.
The book is, at times, terribly difficult to read, but it needs to be. As a testament to Diane Foley’s personal struggle and determination it is always fascinating, as is the depiction of the awful emptiness she experienced on hearing of her son’s death. As a book, it is incredibly moving, and as a journalistic exercise it is gold standard.
American Mother by Colum McCann with Diane Foley is out now (Bloomsbury, £20)
