Hidden Valley Road
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4.1 • 178 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
12 children.
6 of them diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Science's greatest hope in understanding the disease.
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*ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVOURITE BOOKS OF 2020*
*TIME 100 Must-Read Books Of 2020 Pick*
*New York Times bestseller*
*Selected as Oprah's Book Club Pick*
'Startlingly intimate' - The Sunday Times
'Grippingly told and brilliantly reported' - Mail on Sunday
'Unforgettable' - The Times
For fans of Educated, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Three Identical Strangers
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins - aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony - and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?
What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was so extraordinary that the Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institutes of Mental Health. Their story offers a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother, to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amidst profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA informed decades of genetic research that continues today, offering paths to treatment, prediction, and even eradication of the disease for future generations.
With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love and hope.
'An extraordinary case study and tour de force of reporting' - Sylvia Nasar, author of A Beautiful Mind
'This book tore my heart out. It is a revelation-about the history of mental health treatment, about trauma, foremost about family-and a more-than-worthy follow-up to Robert Kolker's brilliant Lost Girls'
-Megan Abbott, Edgar Award-winning author of Dare Me and Give Me Your Hand
'Hidden Valley Road contains everything: scientific intrigue, meticulous reporting, startling revelations, and, most of all, a profound sense of humanity. It is that rare book that can be read again and again'
-David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Oprah calls this book club pick “an extraordinary scientific detective story and family saga.” Journalist Robert Kolker draws us into the jaw-dropping true story of the Galvin family—Mimi, Don, and their 12 children—to explore powerful themes like mental illness, our limited understanding of the human brain, trauma, resilience and forgiveness. His astonishing book follows the Galvins from the late 1940s, when Don and Mimi are a young all-American couple with seemingly infinite promise, through the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, as six of their ten sons are eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, to the present, as the remaining family members come to terms with the shame, denial, secretiveness and chaos caused by the stigma around this horrific disease of the brain. Kolker’s first book, Lost Girls, fell squarely into the true-crime camp, and his ability to build suspense and ferret out hidden truths is a large part of the reason that Hidden Valley Road is such a page-turning read, despite the seriousness and complexity of the subject matter. We can honestly say this is one of the most gripping, fascinating, and moving portraits of a family that we have ever read. It filled us with compassion and a sense of urgency about talking about mental illness openly and honestly.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Kolker (Lost Girls) delivers a powerful look at schizophrenia and the quest to understand it. He focuses on a much-studied case: that of Colorado couple Don and Mimi Galvin's 12 children, born between 1945 and 1965, six of whom were diagnosed with the illness. Drawing on extensive interviews with family members and close acquaintances, he creates a taut and often heartbreaking narrative of the Galvins' travails, which included a murder-suicide and sexual abuse. Their story also allows Kolker to convey how ideas about schizophrenia's cause changed over the 20th century, from theories blaming controlling and emotionally repressive mothers (a type epitomized by Mimi Galvin) to views of the disease as biologically determined a hypothesis researchers hoped to use the family to substantiate. In one especially moving passage, Kolker catches up in 2017 with one of the Galvin girls' daughters in college, where she is interning in a neuroscience lab with hopes of researching schizophrenia. Kolker concludes that while "biology is destiny, to a point," everyone is "a product of the people who surround us the people we're forced to grow up with, and the people we choose to be with later." This is a haunting and memorable look at the impact of mental illness on multiple generations.
Customer Reviews
Insightful
Interesting read
So informative
Truly challenges your perceptions and thinking
Fascinating
Riveting page turner that intertwines the true story of a family suffering from mental illness and the history of psychiatry and its various approaches to treating schizophrenia over decades. A real eye opener to the suffering and misunderstanding of people with mental illness.