Eighteen-year-old Zach does not remember how he came to be in a treatment center for alcoholics, but through therapy and caring friends, his amnesia fades and he learns to face his past while working toward a better future.

Chronciles the emotional war between Irene America, a beautiful, introspective woman of Native American ancestry, struggling to finish her dissertation while raising three children, and her husband Gil, a painter whose reputation is built on a series of now iconic portraits of Irene.

Jonah, a troubled boy who escapes from his dreary life with an alcoholic father by surfing on the coast of Ireland, discovers that he has a twin sister with whom he has an unusual mental link.

Joey, who is still taking medication to keep him from getting too wired, goes to spend the summer with the hard-drinking father he has never known and tries to help the baseball team he coaches win the championship.

Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire, and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the strength to face her alcoholic father.

Where is hope when Eleanor Lapp's life starts to fall apart as extreme grief drives her husband to drink to numb his pain? Life is good on the Pennsylvania Amish farm of newlyweds Vic and Eleanor Lapp-- until a tragic event occurs. Vic turns to alcohol to numb the pain; he loses his job, and his marriage is falling apart. Eleanor writes to her friend, Doretta, in Indiana, asking for advice. Their exchange of letters helps both women through the challenges...

High-schooler Amber's second assignment as a "Temp Lifer" takes her into the body of her boyfriend's twenty-one-year-old sister Shari, who has shut herself off from family and friends and gotten involved with a "Dark Lifer."

Upon returning from a year in Oregon to Texas and her alcoholic father, Kira is distressed to find three of her father's rehab friends staying at her home, while her own friends seem distant.--Provided by Publisher.

When eleven-year-old Ivy Blake leaves the nice farm family where she has been living in upstate New York and moves back in with her mother she is finally forced to face up to the fact that her alcoholic, dysfunctional parent will never be able to provide her with a stable home--and if she wants to achieve her dreams she is going to have to take charge of her own future.

Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk.