A Life Worth Living

Nick Rogen is your average small-town teenager until his mother's bipolar disorder interrupts his youth and forces him into a world full of suicide attempts, doctors, and memory-erasing electroshock treatments. When a battle with substance abuse leads him to a dead-end job twisting off bottle caps from expired soda bottles, he gives up on his childhood dream of becoming a writer. He tries everything from backpacking around Europe to winning a fridge on The Price is Right to help find meaning in his crumbling life.

It isn't until his family drags him across the world to China that he begins to find hope and the inspiration to clean up his life through their adoption of an abandoned Chinese girl. Life isn't always fair though, and an unexpected death back home challenges him to finally face the life he's been trying to leave behind.