'Dave was coming back. I had told her I was leaving if she took him back. And she was taking him back. I walked out of the kitchen and into my bedroom, grabbed my bag, and headed for the door. My mother said, "Where do you think you're going?" I had no idea.'

When her mother takes back her abusive boyfriend once again, Janice Erlbaum makes the desperate decision to run away from home.

From her first frightening night at a shelter in New York's Hell's Kitchen, Janice knows she is in over her head. She is beaten up, shaken down and nearly stabbed by a pregnant girl. Yet as she becomes familiar with this world filled with prostitutes, crack heads and criminals, it's not long before she takes to drugs and promiscuity herself.

But Janice has a choice ... keep on falling or build the life she set ran away to find. After a near-fatal overdose, she eventually finds the inner strength to turn her life around.