Learning to Cry

The bond between a father and daughter is strong enough to weather the most violent storms, but it can also bring savage heartache. From the moment Melissa enters this world in a flurry of chaos and happiness, she holds and manipulates her father's love. There is no way to predict the roller-coaster ride they face. Almost overnight, Melissa's father loses his sweet, little girl. Left in her place is an erratic, unstable, deeply unhappy teenager who is hell-bent on obliterating boundaries and pushing her father, as well as her mother and sisters, to the breaking point. Caught in the middle of her parents' divorce, she doesn't hide her disdain for the rules. But she goes to great lengths to keep her father ignorant of just how far into trouble she falls or how she's trapped by three "friends" from whom there is no escape. Overwhelmed by the stress his crumbling marriage causes, Melissa's father struggles to keep his own life together while trying to save his daughter from the point of no return. He finds himself, alone, bound by his own four walls, drowning in loneliness and tears. Melissa's father, it seems, will have to lose it all to bring her back from the brink.

One person dies or is injured in an alcohol-related accident on an American road every minute. Thousands of teenagers die every year because they either drive drunk or they get in the car with someone who's had too many. It's a mistake that changes lives forever.

Wild-child Melissa is a teenager who experiments with drugs and alcohol to dangerous degrees. She lives for the next party, the next opportunity to sneak out of the house, the next chance to get high in a friends' room after their parents go to bed. But, that all changes the night she gets into a car after those three margaritas.

Gone are the wild parties, gone are the nights spent with friends, gone are her years of rebellion. That life is cut short, leaving her father, who stoically watched her downward spiral, to learn how to cry.