Having suffered abuse and misfortune for much of her life, a young child searches for a better life and finally gets a break in the home of a loving woman with several foster children.

Abandoned by the alcoholic father who idealized the natural world without imparting any survival skills to his children, three siblings in 1970s New York embark on difficult adult lives before their father attempts a reconciliation.

Best friends and neighbors Isaac and Marco are opposite in looks--Isaac is tall and Marco is short--and in abilities--Isaac excels at basketball, while Marco excels at schoolwork. However, that doesn't stop the sixth graders from having each other's back and helping each other get better. Isaac wants to finally take his schoolwork seriously while Marco wants to make the basketball team to make his dad proud of him. As they each work through difficulties...

Jillian Slater hadn't seen her father or his mother in almost 20 years until, on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death, Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, calls and says Jillian's expenses would be paid if she'd fly in to New Orleans for the burial. What Adella didn't tell her was that the apartment house bears the dead weight of a long and painful history. As an investigation into her father's...

A life-threatening illness as a child shows Jenny that her neglectful mother will never take care of her and she spends the next 30 years building a new family until a tragic event causes her two worlds to collide.

Chronicling the adventures of an eccentric, resilient and tight-knit family. A remarkable story of unconditional love. A young woman who, influenced by the joyfully wild nature of her deeply dysfunctional father, found the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.

"Thirteen-year-old Eli likes baggy clothes, baseball caps, and one girl in particular. Her seventeen-year-old sister Anna is more traditionally feminine; she loves boys and staying out late. They are sisters ... Their dad has long been out of the picture, and their mom lives at the mercy of her next drink. When their mom lands herself in enforced rehab, Anna and Eli are left to fend for themselves. Eli and Anna have each gotten used to telling lies...

"From the author of the best-selling Sweetbitter comes an intimate, searingly honest memoir of growing up the child of addicts, of how that turbulent, often harrowing experience has affected her at every stage of her life, and of how she has struggled to transcend this unwanted legacy. When Sweetbitter was published to great success, the author knew she should be happy, but she felt incapable of it, emotionally shut down. She knew too that the roots...

Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....

Danielle's father is an alcoholic, as are both of Luke's parents. Nicole's mother is recovering from crack cocaine addiction. How have these teenagers dealt with such overwhelming conditions? This video explores the emotional confusion and trauma affecting children of substance abusers, showing how many young people are able to break the cycle of addiction and create a healthy pattern for their own lives. Important steps in that process are featured-most...