As one of the most pressing public health issues in contemporary America, the opioid crisis affects individuals across all age groups and transcends socioeconomic status. However, the impact on teenagers is particularly daunting, as they are at a vulnerable stage of development and face difficult challenges in navigating a world permeated by opioid availability. In You’d Be Home Now, author Kathleen Glasgow examines the effects of the opioid crisis on one town and one family through the eyes of a 16-year-old girl named Emory Ward. Glasgow’s novel not only explores Emory’s struggle to help her brother, Joey, manage his opioid addiction but also, through her visits to the treatment clinic, Emory sees firsthand the impact of the opioid crisis on her entire community. When her family’s historic, vacant textile mill becomes a temporary shelter for Mill Haven’s exiles with drug addictions—people who look just like Joey—Emory’s entire family must decide if they will respond in judgment like the rest of the community or with kindness.

The opioid crisis originated in the late 1990s when pharmaceutical companies began aggressively marketing prescription opioids as a safe solution for pain management. Targeting specific communities like the Appalachian region, rife with people suffering through chronic pain from long hours in coal mines, the companies encouraged doctors to offer the medications as a miraculous solution.