Memoir by 'American Mother' of slain journalist James Foley tells of empathy, faith and redemption

Diane Foley’s story is as difficult to tell as it is to hear, yet the mother of slain American journalist James Foley feels that both are necessary. Many will remember that James Foley was first captured by Muammar Gaddafi loyalists in Libya in 2011, and freed 44 days later; a harrowing experience that left one of his friends and colleagues dead.

He returned to the region in 2012, where he was again taken hostage, this time by ISIS terrorists in Syria. During his nearly two years in captivity there, James Foley was beaten and tortured, primarily by three British national-turned-ISIS-radicals, sometimes called “The Beatles” for their British accents.

In August of 2014, James Foley was beheaded. All the while Diane Foley advocated — first for the government to do more to locate and free James Foley and his fellow hostages, and later, for systems and protocols to release U.S. hostages and detainees.

Her new memoir “American Mother: A Life Reclaimed,” written with Collum McCann, gives readers not only a detailed account of those painful years, but also a tale of faith, empathy, redemption and forgiveness, as Diane Foley goes on to meet with one of her son's murderers.

By Diane Foley 

Excerpted with permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.