On August 19, 2014, the world was stunned when ISIS uploaded a video to YouTube showing the beheading of James Foley. James, a journalist who had been kidnapped in 2012 in Syria, was the first American killed by ISIS. American Mother, written by Irish novelist Colum McCann with Diane Foley, James’s mother, gracefully broaches the unfathomable barbarism of James’s death, his passionate career in journalism, US policies on war and hostage negotiation, and the unfillable absence after the loss of a child.

The first section, written in the third person, narrates Diane Foley’s meeting with Alexanda Kotey, a British national who had joined ISIS and pled guilty for his role in kidnapping, torturing, and killing four people, including James. The one thing Diane trusts throughout this harrowing meeting – and before, while navigating US policies and officials during James’s imprisonment and after his death – is her faith that God will provide her the strength, courage, and grace to defend the dignity of both her son and his captors.

In the next section, the book is narrated by Diane in the first person, beginning with a retelling of the day she learned her son had been killed and the subsequent cloud of grief. She and McCann write vividly about the profound absence and sense of helplessness that occurred after James’s death. Subsequent sections of the book detail James’s life and his dedication to telling the stories of people involved in or otherwise impacted by conflict. While American Mother is about James’s death, it is also about the faith that sustained Diane to wake up each morning, to advocate for hostages and their families, and to face the men who murdered her son. While Diane could not anticipate her son’s death, she seems uniquely positioned to receive even this tragedy as an opportunity to seek the grace of God.

The book is particularly strong in assessing the role of the US government in hostage negotiation. Many European countries can and do negotiate for the release of their citizens held abroad. The United Kingdom and the United States, however, generally do not. All non-British and non-Americans held by ISIS were released, while the British and American hostages were killed. Though neither McCann nor Diane are experts in foreign policy, they write persuasively in support of revisiting the policies that led to James’s death.

Despite its painful and harrowing subject material, American Mother is a book of hope for America, an America full of strangers seeking to console a family bearing unimaginable loss, an America that can prioritize the lives of its citizens. McCann and Foley write with grace and conviction about the need for moral courage in the bleakest moments of life. It is only through the cultivation of such courage that James was able to report on conflict in Syria and that Diane Foley was able to do the work she has since in trying to make sense of her son’s death. However dark life may be, relying on faith to find courage and grace can provide a means for preserving the memory of those lost.