
American Mother
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Narrated by:
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Jamie Lee Curtis
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Colum McCann
About this listen
In late 2021, Diane Foley sat at a table across from her son's killer, Alexanda Kotey, a member of the ISIS group known as "The Beatles" who plead guilty to the kidnapping, torture, and murder of her son seven years before. Kotey was about to go serve life imprisonment and this was Diane’s chance to talk to the man who had been involved with brutally taking her son's last breath. What would she say to his killer? What would he reveal to her? Might she even be able to summon forgiveness for him?
So begins American Mother—which comes across alternately like a thriller, a biography, a mystery, a memoir, and a literary examination of grace.
Diane looks back on the early days when Jim was a child and his journey to journalism, and the killing fields of the world where he reports with indefatigable determination and insight on the plight of those caught up in the agonies of war. She guides us through her family history and the difficulties they faced when Jim was captured. And she also charts the tenacity it takes to turn her grief into grace as she seeks to give voice to those who are still being kidnapped and wrongfully detained around the world.
Few journeys are more worthy than this and, in this astonishing book, we are all invited to celebrate the lives of those who are never, in the end, gone.
©2024 Etruscan Press (P)2024 Etruscan PressPeople who viewed this also viewed...
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Bassam Aramin is Palestinian. Rami Elhanan is Israeli. They inhabit a world of conflict that colors every aspect of their daily lives, from the roads they are allowed to drive on, to the schools their daughters, Abir and Smadar, each attend, to the checkpoints, both physical and emotional, they must negotiate. Their worlds shift irreparably after 10-year-old Abir is killed by a rubber bullet and 13-year-old Smadar becomes the victim of suicide bombers. When Bassam and Rami learn of each other’s stories, they recognize the loss that connects them.
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Too many chapters & interruptions
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Let the Great World Spin
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In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
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Wish I'd chosen the book, rather than audio.
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By: Colum McCann
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This Side of Brightness
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TransAtlantic
- A Novel
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- Narrated by: Geraldine Hughes
- Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
-
Performance
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Story
In the National Book Award-winning Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann thrilled readers with a marvelous high-wire act of fiction that The New York Times Book Review called "an emotional tour de force". Now McCann demonstrates once again why he is one of the most acclaimed and essential authors of his generation with a soaring novel that spans continents, leaps centuries, and unites a cast of deftly rendered characters, both real and imagined.
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Too breathtaking to read just once...
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By: Colum McCann
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Twist
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- Narrated by: Colum McCann
- Length: 8 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is assigned to cover the underwater cables that carry the world’s information. The sum of human existence—words, images, transactions, memes, voices, viruses—travels through the tiny fiber-optic tubes. But sometimes the tubes break, at an unfathomable depth.
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So happy he’s still writing fiction
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- Narrated by: Colum McCann
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Performance
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It’s the middle of the summer before her fiftieth birthday and Alexandra is just barely hanging on. Grieving her father and pining for her home country of Zimbabwe, chafing and straining against the stresses and strictures of midlife as a mother and ex-wife, and piecing her way through a disastrous relationship with a younger woman that lurches and buckles, but never quite breaks. And then—suddenly and incomprehensibly—her son Fi, at 21 years old, dies in his sleep. What happens next is what Alexandra details in this book.
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Decent people stuck in a terrible situation
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Old School
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Gordon Korman is the best at writing Middle School books
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What listeners say about American Mother
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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Performance
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- JKL
- 05-16-24
Deeply moving
Deeply moving story from a mother’s perspective. Thank you Diane Foley for sharing such a personal experience. Your strength, faith and steadfastness is admirable. Moved me to tears.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- JO
- 07-21-24
Lessons in courage and forgiveness
A beautiful book about a heroic, courageous journalist and his brave, generous and compassionate mother. What extraordinary role models.
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Overall
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Performance
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- Joan Henderson
- 11-20-24
Such a sad story
Heartbreaking story of how James Foley died as a result of poor US policy and how his mother fights to change this for others.
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