2020 CIBA Journey Book Awards 1st Place Winner
2020 International Book Awards, Winner in Parenting & Family
2020 International Book Awards, Finalist in Health: Addiction & Recovery
2020 International Book Awards Winner in Parenting & Family
2020 International Book Awards Finalist in Health: Addiction & Recovery
2018 Sarton Women's Book Awards finalist in Memoir
2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Quarterfinalist
2018 Readers' Favorites Book Awards Gold Medal in Non-Fiction—Inspirational
2018 Living Now Awards Silver Winner in Inspirational Memoir—Female
“This memoir—that is, the story alone—could also change the world.”
—Story Book Circle Reviews
“...strikingly personal and lyrically told.... engrossing....A heartfelt, inspiring, and deeply moving chronology of substance abuse and enduring, unconditional familial love.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“I am sitting on the back porch of our condo bawling. I just finished Saving Bobby and I am filled with a belief that this 349-page book is the bravest thing I have ever seen in print. As Renee Hodges made it so clear in the end and was so apparent in each page, this is her story and maybe her eventual salvation. This process has brought Hodges to her darkest places and she found her salvation there. This sounds simple but I know how really hard that is. No one wants to do that. But she did.”
—Dr. William H. Davis, Orthopedic Surgeon
“As an orthopaedic surgeon, I can say that we have faced the Perfect Storm in unwittingly facilitating opioid addiction in our patients . . . This has created an environment where the downstream catastrophe of opioid addiction has not been prioritized or even really thought much about. Renee Hodges has now given us a very loud, clear wakeup call that we must heed . . . One has to ponder the tremendous good fortune and massive effort required to shepherd Bobby through the process of recovery.”
—Claude T. Moorman, III, MD, Executive Director, Duke Sports Sciences Institute and Head Team Physician, Duke Athletics
“If you have a recovering substance abuser in your life or even if you don’t, this is an engaging read and a page turner. A truly inspiring look at a young man who was on a downward spiral until he found the right person to help him.”
—Linsey L. Hughes, Executive in Residence, Duke Financial Economics Center
“Renée Hodges spent a courageous year on the front lines of opiate addiction by taking in her struggling nephew, Bobby. Her story of his addiction odyssey is an all-too-common and silent experience in modern America. This story . . . exposes how difficult addiction can be, how it can be found anywhere—rich or poor—and ultimately how it may be overcome. Hodges’s story grips the reader from the very first page. Out of her experience with her nephew comes an immensely moving and ultimately uplifting portrait of one American family as it confronts—and surmounts—addiction and fear.”
—Mimi Lukens, Senior Lecturer at Law, Duke Law School
“The behind-the-scenes story, which Hodges so beautifully described, was gut-wrenching, but for those searching for hope with a family member or loved one, I believe this book could be life changing.”
—Becky Wood, AFLAC Senior Sales Rep
“As a middle school/upper elementary teacher for the past twenty years, this book reminded me how easily and how many people have family members or friends who suffer from addiction. There is no shame or reason to judge; rather, we should accept who they are and offer them support. Everyone should read this book.”
—Louise Tranchin, middle school and upper elementary teacher
“Having worked with middle schoolers for years, I’ve seen many young people from every socioeconomic group struggle with substance abuse. Addiction in their families, of their friends, and of their own, often resulting in permanent emotional and physical scaring. Teachers and parents will benefit from reading this eye-opening account into what might be an unfamiliar reality.”
—Denise E. Carr, junior high and middle school science teacher
“Hodges bravely shares the events leading to Bobby’s addiction and places them in context—letting us see family behaviors and cultural patterns that contributed to the challenge. She confronts the stigma of shame surrounding addiction—in a real and personal way. The book is also a love story: a story of a woman who refuses to do the convenient thing and give up on her nephew. Its message provides encouragement for the many families that are involved in this same struggle.”
—Ruth Caccavale Founder, Bull City Book Club, Durham, NC
“As a practicing pediatrician facing the challenges of a growing number of ever younger opioid abusers, and the ripple effect it has on the families and the communities they live in, I find Renee Hodges’s book couldn’t be more timely. Hodges’s straightforward approach, common sense, humor, and honesty bring a heartfelt reality to a growing problem faced by far too many. This book is a must-read for all of us.”
—Kim Leversedge MD, Board Certified Pediatrician
“Start to tell anyone the premise behind Renee Hodges’s remarkable book, and odds are they’ll stop you before you get two sentences out. Their faces betray stunned recognition—‘That’s what happened to my brother’s youngest daughter’; ‘Oh dear heaven, you could be talking about my oldest son’; ‘My best friend’s son died from an overdose when he was twenty, she’s never been the same”—because this story, though it is so poignantly Bobby and Renee’s story, belongs to us all. None of us has gone untouched by this tragic, life-altering epidemic. Saving Bobby strikes a chord in all of us: drawn by the larger picture of a frightening epidemic, we are caught in the gripping drama of the personal. This is a book you cannot put down. This is a story you cannot forget—nor should you.”
—Dee Mason, journalist, author, playwright, and public speaker
2018-02-05
A woman faces drug addiction when it arrives on her doorstep in the form of family. As a wife and mother of three children, the North Carolina author knew how important support, guidance, and unconditional love were to a child. Her parental courageousness was put to the test when her brother John shared a serious issue involving his 29-year-old son, Bobby, who became addicted to back pain medication in college and then moved on to heroin. Years spent in and out of rehabilitation facilities had worn Bobby down, and now he was on the streets and feeling suicidal. In 2013, Hodges (co-author: The Triangle Home Book, 1989) welcomed him into her and her husband Will's home and embarked on a year that proved to be one of the couple's greatest and most emotionally challenging periods. When a close friend lost her own son to an overdose, the reality of Hodges' family situation hit home. Despite becoming buoyed by regular contact with her psychologist, the author struggled to relate to Bobby's late-night pacing, emotional immaturity, the staggering amount of physician-prescribed, mood-altering medications he took daily, and his sky-high drug tolerance that made a scheduled colonoscopy impossible. Throughout the stirring memoir, Hodges deftly weaves in personal impressions about her life, her checkered past with her brother, and her strained marriage to Will. She notes that she considered herself blessed and "privileged," which made her sense of empathy and compassion for others heightened, especially when Bobby began to open up emotionally to her in the early stages of his stay with her and Will. As days turned to weeks, Hodges soothed her anxiety around Bobby by enacting house rules that restricted him from stealing, lying, and using drugs but that also proactively offered direction, purpose, and tools for his much-needed stabilization. In her richly detailed account, the author recalls her myriad reactions to Bobby's plight. Lacking experience in caring for an addict, Hodges was initially hopeful but soon became exhausted with the obsessive push and pull of drug compulsion and fragmented emotions that had become her nephew's sole existence. Bobby's eventual relapse and sudden departure took her by surprise but seemed somehow necessary in order to bring them closer together. Her ordeal is strikingly personal and lyrically told through emails (to herself, therapeutically, as well as to others), narration, drug-related articles, and bittersweet memories of her own history of trying to come to terms with a formerly close-knit family that fractured after her father died. "Addiction is exhausting and relentless," she writes in a poignant section pondering the emotional and physical toll drug abuse had taken on her entire family. Hodges' bracing year with Bobby ended on an upbeat note as her nephew took the initiative to embrace a fulfilling life structured around work, school, and recovery. The author closes her engrossing story with sobering facts and useful resource materials on the drug abuse epidemic suffocating the nation. A heartfelt, inspiring, and deeply moving chronology of substance abuse and enduring, unconditional familial love.
