... Don't miss this keenly observed, smart, funny, and well-crafted
book!-Lyric Winik, NYT Award Winning WriterJess Porter spent her
childhood bouncing from therapist to therapist and prescription to
prescription. An outcast at school and a misfit at home, the only solace
she ever found was in her relationship with her dad, Tom. Now he's dead.
Feeling rejected by her adopted mom and her biological twin sister, Jess
runs off to South Florida. But she can't outrun her old life. Watching
the blood drip down her arm after her latest round of self-inflicted
cutting, she decides her only choice is to find and face what frightens
her most. Because I Had To takes the reader inside the worlds of
adoption, teen therapy, family law, and the search for a biological
family. With a cast of finely drawn, complicated characters, it asks us
to consider: can the present ever heal the past?