Sarah Lovell never knew her biological father, and she first experienced sexual abuse at age eleven. Those early traumas led to a life of increasing instability. Lovell's intimate partners beat and secluded her, and the fragile young woman disappeared into a falsely comforting haze of alcohol and drugs. She lost custody of her first two children, a son and a daughter. She gave birth to two more daughters, and temporarily lost custody of them as well, before a rock-bottom revelation finally forced her to get sober.

Her life seemed to be coming together, but her children began to...