A Picture Runs Through It

A Picture Runs Through It

An old photo and a Marquette connection brought together the co-author and the subject of American Mother, the moving memoir of James Foley's mother, Diane.

American Mother is the story of Diane Foley, whose son James Foley, Arts '96, a freelance journalist working in Syria, was held captive and murdered by ISIS militants in 2014. In this book, her voice is channeled into searing reality by award-winning author Colum McCann, who "brings us on a journey of strength, resilience and radical empathy."

The connection between Diane Foley and McCann was years in the making, and it started with a photo. But it took a book club at Marquette to truly bring them together.

The club's host and creator was Dr. Leah Flack, professor of English and a creative force behind Marquette's literary and storytelling community. During the pandemic, she suspected that a virtual book club could help members of the community feel connected as they exchanged ideas and reactions. In late 2020, she announced that McCann's new bestseller, Apeirogon, would be her club's next selection.

When the email went out, her colleague Dr. Tom Durkin, Arts '96, Grad '07, was quick to respond - not only with his RSVP but also with a photo of James Foley, his close friend from their time together as Marquette students through the end of Foley's life. In the photo, Foley is in a bunker while reporting in Afghanistan. He is reading a book, propped on his crossed legs, with only the top right corner of the cover visible. If you're unfamiliar with the book, there's not much to go on. There looks to be a sticker and a single visible word in the title: "THE."

That was enough, however, for Flack to recognize the book immediately as McCann's novel Let the Great World Spin. The book won a National Book Award, which explains the sticker.

Durkin and Flack had made the connection in the photograph, but she wondered: Had McCann?

"There's an invisible string connecting the people (in Let the Great World Spin) that the book helps us see. It suggests that if you pay attention out in the world, you might see those connections there too," Flack says. "I think that's why, when Tom sent me that picture of Jim years ago, my thought was: This is an opening of sorts. I felt that if I were a character in Let the Great World Spin, then Colum would either know this picture or want to know about this picture."

"Marquette is so much a part of this book …"

Author Colum McCann on American Mother, the book on which he partnered with Diane Foley to tell her story of "strength, resilience and radical empathy."

When she reached out, McCann responded immediately. He'd had that photo hanging in his office for years. He'd even tried reaching out to Diane Foley to say he'd be happy to connect if she ever "wanted someone to write about Jim or even write about her own experience," but she'd never received his message. McCann thanked Flack for the inquiry and said he'd love to log in and join the book club.

With McCann attending the next book club meeting, Durkin also extended an invitation to Diane Foley, with whom he remains close. "That's how I met Colum," she recalled at an American Mother event hosted by Flack at Marquette this past spring. "I had never met him before, so it was thanks to that gathering that we got together and (it was) truly meant to be."

McCann felt Flack and Marquette played an appropriate role in American Mother coming together. "Marquette is so much a part of this book, not just as a place that welcomed Jim and helped Jim to grow," he said at the spring Marquette event, "but also as a place where the philosophy of engagement and commitment and storytelling and moral courage and all these things that Jim was about was fostered."

Flack was equally moved, saying, "I have learned from this experience and from learning about Jim. It sounds to me that he was very much like that - just open. Open to others, open to being surprised by others, and surprised by things that can happen."

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