Flight of the Dragonfly: How I Found My Kidnapped Daughters Melissa Hawach

It was a case that made international headlines in 2006: two small girls, Cedar, 3, and Hannah, 5, were abducted by their Lebanese-Australian father, Joe, and flown from Sydney into Lebanon in the middle of a war.

Their distraught mother, Melissa Hawach, was left to figure out where her daughters were, if they were safe and what, if anything, she could do to get them back.

When the courts and all legitimate avenues failed her, Melissa had to make an agonising decision; should she break the law and snatch the children from their father? And how would she then be able to get them out of the increasingly dangerous Middle East?

Here, for the first time, Melissa Hawach reveals the story that the media missed: a candid account of her ill-fated marriage to Joe Hawach, the subsequent shocking kidnapping, her journey to Beirut and the gripping tale of how she made a decision no parent should have to make.