Wanting To Live is a feel-good story about ten-year old Sarah who lives in a house with her mother, grandmother and housekeeper, Miss Emma. She thinks she has nothing and no one except her grandmother, whom she lovingly calls Grams. She learns about a dark family mystery and it whets her appetite for life beyond the house. When Sarah is fourteen and her Grams dies, Nick probates the will and Sarah inherits the house. For the next three years Sarah lives alone in the house with the haunting memory of Grams and the here and now presence of mother and Miss Emma. Sarah has a despondent personality and keeps to herself and declares that she will never need anyone in her life, not even Nick. At seventeen, she leaves her mother, Miss Emma and Nick and travels to London to stay with her aunt who is part of the family mystery. Along with wanting to learn more about family, she wants to learn about life. In London she encounters new friends, experiences and finds new talents, but always sees Nick in the background. Sarah learns that out of unusually common situations, exceptionally uncommon people rise up.