The Flower of Aleppo

As if enduring the harsh and oppressive life facing all Tunisian women wasn't overwhelming enough, the shattering of Salma's marriage into divorce weighs on her like the death of hope resurrected with the fall of the Arab Spring. Forever giving and self-sacrificing, she's struggling to hold on to what remains of her broken family in the only way she knows how, by burying herself in her work as a paramedic and escaping into other people's tragedy and pain. Mourad, Salma's teenage son, has become more and more consumed by feelings of helplessness, confusion, and abandonment as his family disintegrates. He so desperately needs to belong to someone. Or something. So much so, when the spawns of the dark force known as ISIS ensnare him into their jihadi brotherhood like some hoard of wild and hungry beasts catching scent of a wounded prey, they only need lure him in with promises of eternal friendship and the power to change his crumbling world. Now alone, Salma must summon all the strength and courage she has left in order to save him from a fate worse than death. She sets out on a hazardous journey into the very heart of darkness itself, ISIS' stronghold in the war-ravaged inferno known as the Syrian city of Aleppo, where they've taken her beloved Mourad for indoctrination into their cult of psychopathic fundamentalism and training in their bloodthirsty methods of persuasion.