<B>Lauded by critics and authors for her heartbreakingly real heroines, Laura Wiess brings readers another devastating tale of betrayal and redemption rich with the raw emotion that made <I>Such a Pretty Girl </I>a classic.</B> <P><I>How can you make someone love you when they won't?</I> <P><I>And what if that person happens to be your mother?</I> <P>Sayre Bellavia grew up knowing she was a mistake: unplanned and unwanted. At five months shy of eighteen, she's become an expert in loneliness, heartache, and neglect. Her whole life she's been cursed, used, and left behind. Swallowed a thousand tears and ignored a thousand deliberate cruelties. Sayre's stuck by her mother through hell, tried to help her, be near her, be <I>important </I>to her even as her mother slipped away into a violent haze of addiction, destroying the only chance Sayre ever had for a real family. <P>Now her mother is lying in a hospital bed, near death, ravaged by her own destructive behavior. And as Sayre fights her way to her mother's bedside, she is terrified but determined to get the answer to a question no one should ever have to ask: <I>Did my mother ever really love me?</I> And what will Sayre do if the answer is yes?