She was born Roberta Susan Lamont on July 31, 1968, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her parents were Robert John Lamont and Susan Delilah Beauvoir. In September 1974, on her first day of the first grade at the Saint Augustine Academy for Girls, Bobbie met and became friends with Billie Carver. They would be best friends for the next twenty-seven years. In 1983, Bobbie’s younger sister, Delilah, was killed in a car accident while they were in Birmingham, Alabama, visiting their aunt (their mother’s younger sister), Virginia “Gina” Walker. Bobbie graduated from Saint Augustine three years later, valedictorian of her class (class of 1986). Instead of leaving home to go to college, Bobbie stayed in New Orleans and went to Tulane University (her mother graduated from there in 1967). In the summer the year before she graduated from Tulane, the summer of 1989, Bobbie was a summer intern at Black Springs Press. She met and became friends with Natalie Adams, another summer intern there. Bobbie graduated the following year, in 1990. Bobbie left New Orleans almost a month later. She drove to Birmingham, Alabama, where she spent a month visiting her Aunt Gina. It was there she met and fell in love with Miller Hoffman. Their summer romance lasted only a month, ending when Bobbie left Birmingham and drove to New York City, where her new job as an assistant editor at Black Springs Press, a new apartment, and a new roommate (Natalie Adams) waited for her. She worked at Black Springs Press for seven years, rising to the position of Junior Editor. Bobbie was introduced to Truman Carver by her best friend, Billie Carver, in the summer of 1996, when Bobbie and Billie attended their ten-year class reunion (Saint Augustine Academy). She married Truman the following year, in 1997, and their daughter, Willemina Josephine Carver, was born in 1998. Bobbie left New York City and moved to Alexandria, Virginia, where she became the new English teacher at the Susan B. Anthony Academy for Girls.

In 2002, a year after Billie’s death, Bobbie wrote a memoir about their friendship. Her memoir, Two Girls Against the World, was published by her old employer, Black Springs Press, in 2005, three years later. Bobbie’s agent, Janice York, got her a two-book deal with Riverhaven Books (the rival to Black Springs Press) in 2006. Her second memoir, Single in the City, was published two years later, in 2008. Bobbie’s almost eleven-year marriage ended the following year, when she was served divorce papers while on her second book tour (for the paperback of her second memoir). Her divorce was finalized the following year, in 2010. In the summer of 2010, Bobbie was reunited with Miller Hoffman. His debut novel, The Delta Queen, was inspired by their summer romance in 1990. She married Miller the day after her forty-second birthday. She moved to Phoenix, Arizona, to live with him. Her third memoir, Against All Odds, was published two years later, in 2012. She shifted to writing fiction, publishing her first novel two years later, in 2014 (for Black Springs Press, having fulfilled her two-book deal with Riverhaven Books). Bobbie and Miller moved back to New Orleans in 2016, after her daughter graduated from Camelback High School. In 2018, her second memoir was republished by Black Springs Press with a different title (A Real Southern Lady).