In the middle of one of the worst civil wars in Syria’s history, Irish mother Louise Monaghan walked across a heavily guarded border to save her six-year-old child from the father who had snatched her from her home. Not knowing what lay ahead, Louise tricked her ex-husband into believing she still loved him and wanted to live together as a family, in order to see her kidnapped child again.

Once in his homeland, she too was held captive, locked inside a run-down house day and night with little food and no hope of escape. She was severely beaten by Mostafa and left unconscious on the ground in front of their child, but just 24 hours later she and her little girl made a daring escape.

The journey they made through bomb attacks and sniper fire, and across a heavily patrolled mountain range in the dead of night, led by illegal people-smugglers, is a miracle in itself. Somehow they both survived, and Stolen is their breathtaking account of events.