When Melissa Francis was eight, she won the role of a lifetime: Cassandra Cooper Ingalls, the little girl who was adopted by the Ingalls family on the prime-time soap opera, Little House on the Prairie. Despite her age, she was already a veteran actress, moving from one Hollywood set to the next. But behind the scenes, her success was fueled by the pride, pressure, and sometimes grinding cruelty of her stage mother. While Melissa thrived under pressure,...

The child actress best known for her performances as television character Punky Brewster traces her journey from child star to entrepreneur and mother of two, describing how her unconventional upbringing in Los Angeles enabled her approaches to parenting.