In a statement, Jodie says the book is nothing but "hazy recollections, fantasies and borrowed press releases." She says Buddy left home when she was nine: "I don't know him well....I certainly have never spoken to him about my personal life, as I and my entire family consider him a distant acquaintance motivated solely by greed and sour grapes."
In the E.P. Dutton book, Buddy writes that the kids were raised by his single mother and her lesbian lover. He also speculates on Jodie's sexuality, saying "I have always assumed Jodie was gay or bisexual." He's now in the construction business in Minnesota but had an early career as a child actor in Mayberry R.F.D..
Jodie says that her older brother (he's 39, she's 34) "has had a strained relationship with my family...due to his on-again, off-again severe dependence on drugs, his physically violent outbursts and his constant attempts at obtaining money from my mother....Buddy has done nothing but break her heart his whole life. That's a kind of sadness that no mother will ever get over."