Booze. Drugs. Rock ‘n’ roll.

Not necessarily in that order, and not exactly what a mom wants for her 15-year-old.

Yet Northeast Harbor resident Martha Tod Dudman faced just that as her daughter entered her teenage years. She captured the ordeal in her frank, eloquent 2001 memoir, “Augusta, Gone: A True Story,” the movie adaptation of which airs tonight.

Though the made-for-TV version lacks the nuance of Dudman’s prose, it works as a cautionary tale. In true Lifetime fashion, it depicts Martha as a woman in crisis who – after much struggle and melodrama – prevails. Sharon Lawrence (“NYPD Blue”) plays a mom at wit’s end while Tim Matheson (“The West Wing”) is her ex-husband and laid-back foil.

But Mika Boorem (“Blue Crush”) steals the show as the self-destructive Augusta. Whether strung out and brandishing a knife toward Mom and Dad, or dipping Oreos into shots of vodka, her vulnerability shines.

It’s not the acting that needs work in “Augusta, Gone,” it’s the back story. Unlike Dudman’s memoir, the movie makes Augusta’s abrupt turn from good girl to junkie seem implausible.

Getting a D on an English test is hardly reason to drop your best friend, pick up smoking and start hanging out with a bad crowd.

The movie also downplays Dudman’s chutzpah. In the book, she’s resilient, multifaceted and confused about what to do because of her own wild past. Onscreen, she’s one-dimensional.

Where book and movie come together is in the message: Don’t give up on your children, no matter what.

Too bad Lifetime feels the need to convey it with all the subtlety of a whack on the head with a Popov bottle.