Haunted by Characters and Their Story

I'm diligently working on editing my manuscript. The plot wasn't working and in order to fix it, I had to change the beginning and a major part of the backstory. That, friends, means a complete rewrite. I can salvage pieces of scenes, but most of the work is new pages.

The new plot is working well, and the story is 100% better. Some writers would have shoved this aside and gone on to write a new book. I tried, but the characters and the situation kept haunting me.

What about you? Have you ever had characters and story that just had to be told, even if it meant a rewrite? How did you handle it?