Part of the grace of the book is to present us with a thoughtful and impassioned woman who sits outside every stereotype.

An innovative, unsettling and utterly compelling narrative.

The picture Diane paints of the incompetence and fearful mishandling of the American hostages is horrifying.

Has an inbuilt tension, even though we know the key developments.

An appalling, fascinating tale.

His account of her face-off with Kotey doesn’t stint on high drama; in places it reads like an excitable would-be screenplay. But thereafter he’s more measured, switching back in time to voice Diane in the first person..

I found her faith bracing, for the very reason that it’s unusual, and it’s also the scaffolding on which she balances ideas that should matter to us all: of compassion, of forgiveness, of understanding.

Her heartbreak and fury are evident on every page as she describes her family’s battle to save the son they cannot reach while forced to reckon with a murder that can never be understood, let alone explained. It is hard to call such a tragic story a thing of beauty, and yet that is what McCann has created here. Unforgettable..

An indelible portrait of a mother's courage.