This book may contain language, sexual content, and themes of grief and loss, which may be challenging for some readers. Reader caution advised.
Peace Be With You
by Andrea Elise
Hello, High Plains. My name is Andrea Elise, coming to you from Amarillo, Texas, to say a few words about the 2023 memoir by Diane Foley (along with collaborator Colum McCann) called American Mother.
The memoir begins when Diane, a 73-year-old woman, travels to Virginia to face her son’s murderer. Alexanda Kotey, one of three British citizens who became a radical ISIS members, killed Diane’s son, Jim, a freelance journalist.
The murder by the group calling themselves “The Beatles” was brutal and shocking: Jim was beheaded in 2014 after spending years in a Syrian prison.
The book begins in third person, remarking about Diane: “her greatest accomplishment is the container of her sorrow within.”
We are introduced to Alexanda as someone who wants to be known in reality, hardships and all, as a human being demanding “a portion of love.”
Kotey toggles back and forth from dissembling and minimizing to accepting responsibility for his crimes. He tells Diane that he can see himself, in another life, as a journalist.
Diane speaks freely to Alexanda and also listens to his views, knowing that “listening is the quiet soul of storytelling.”
Once the memoir switches to first person, Diane remarks that “there is no such thing as singular truth…The truth can be viewed from a variety of angles.” She says that it is vital that we know our enemies.
Diane is appalled that hostages from countries other than Britain and the United States were freed when the policy in this country was not to negotiate with terrorists.
She was not at all impressed when President Obama called her to express his sorrow and told her that they did everything they could to prevent Jim’s death. Instead, she remembers seeing the President laughing with his friends on the golf course and wonders if he had called her from that venue.
Diane experiences the full spectrum of emotions one can consider under this and other unspeakable atrocities: She is angry, fearful, anxious, sad, stoic, frustrated, empathetic, determined.
This mother’s grief is unimaginable and none of us would wish it on our worst enemy. Somehow, though, I could not get past the tangle of events, stories about her family, interaction with other parents of journalists and overseas workers who have been killed. I simply could not connect with this memoir.
However, American Mother does leave the reader with a sigh of strength and resolve. During their last meeting, Alexanda reaches his hand and Diane shakes it, saying, “Peace be with you.”
Her empathy, at least partial forgiveness and now fervent activism are gifts to the world that matters, the world of NOW.
I am reminded of the first two lines of poet Mary Oliver’s “Messenger”:
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird
In the end, if we are lucky, what we have lost may be overshadowed by what has and will be changed.
This is Andrea Elise for the HPPR Radio Readers Book Club.
