Well-researched and captivating look at a family of 12 with 10 sons some of whom suffer from schizophrenia. Family story is interspersed with research into schizophrenia overvthe years.

A history of pain
Posted on May 18, 2020 by Kel Munger
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker (Doubleday, $29.95).

Now that Oprah’s chosen it, there’s not much reason to rave about Robert Kolker’s latest book, but it is so very worthy of your time that I simply must do so.

Kolker weaves, in alternating chapters, the story of one tragic family with the history of psychiatry as it attempted to understand and treat schizophrenia.

Six of Don and Mimi Galvin’s twelve children exhibited symptoms of mental illness, including the delusions that are a hallmark of the spectrum of disorders we know as schizophrenia. Like most things that involve humans, it’s complicated, but what comes through loud and clear is the compassion that the author has for people who are living with mental illness—as well as their families and loved ones, who are often collateral damage.

With twelve kids spread out over two decades, the Galvins covered the entire Baby Boom and started into Gen X. They also covered a wide range of treatments for mental illness, including the advent of psychotropic drugs and the use, disuse, and return to ECT (electro-convulsive therapy, or shock treatment). There are institutions and group homes, as well as frequent returns to the house on Hidden Valley Road; in addition to the suffering of the “boys” who had diagnoses, there was the suffering of their neurotypical siblings.

This is a fantastic book, rich with scientific and cultural context, that pulls no punches—yet always has empathy for the wounded.

Fascinating, very compelling read, will be great for book discussions. Add an extra star if you loved Abnormal Psych class in College. Kolker alternates the family's narrative with a history of the treatment of schizophrenia. These sections may be heavy going for some readers, but are crucial to understanding the story and extending it beyond the Galvin family to our world. Kolker seamlessly weaves so many individual narratives together. This book is a true page turner, I could not put it down.

This is a heart-breaking story of a family with twelve children, six of whom were later diagnosed with schizophrenia. The reader is introduced to the family through the eyes of the youngest, a girl who never succumbed to mental illness herself, but being surrounded by it was impacted along with the rest of the family. It is a hard book to read. One that you want to put down and not pick up again, but the need to find out how the family copes overrides the fear of discovering more sadness. It is also a look at how schizophrenia was dealt with in the 1950’-1970’s and how this family helped with research. I cannot imagine what it was like to have to pretend their lives were normal. I think about how a family like this would have been shunned when I was growing up. Through Kolker’s compassionate writing, I felt like I knew each member of the family.

3.5 stars. Fascinating, readable, and depressing as hell. Unfortunately this fell a little short for me in a few ways.

At first, the hook of this book is enough to draw your attention. Just one family, with twelve children, where half of them have diagnoses of schizophrenia. When you hear it, it's is such a strange and unusual thing that you do not see it as real experiences. Kolker's main goal here is to change that, to make you see the real impact the illness has on people, how it affects them over days and years. He intersperses their story with the history of the scientific research into schizophrenia. Both stories are interesting and well-written, but for me both were flawed.

The family's story is hampered in ways Kolker cannot really help. While there are 14 members of the Galvin family, it's quite clear that only 3 spent considerable time with Kolker. Many have died. And it's absolutely understandable why many of the siblings who are not schizophrenic would have had enough of the whole thing and not want to be extensively interviewed, but as a reader I kept expecting the story to open up outside of the three women in it, except it rarely did. An even bigger obstacle that Kolker cannot help is that the schizophrenic siblings are not generally capable of providing their own point of view, as they are suffering not only from their illness but from the serious toll the treatments have taken on them. But it is a badly needed counterpoint. It is hard to see a story about mental illness that does not include any voices from the mentally ill. I think it could have benefited from more of an effort to present to the reader what their experiences were like through research and interviews with other schizophrenic people. I certainly would have appreciated it, the ill siblings often feel more like objects to be managed than people, and it often left a bad taste in my mouth.

I also found that the emphasis on the mother and two daughters was sometimes too bogged down with their history and grudges. Again, these are all entirely understandable, but much of the end of the book is made up almost entirely of the daughters' attempts to work through their anger from their childhood. They have suffered immensely and I am full of sympathy for them, but when we dive into their specific ways of coping with these old traumas, the book can lose focus. It also made me feel weird about the mother, Mimi, who is seen by the daughters as having prioritized their ill brothers over their own needs, and this is generally presented as the factual account. We find later that Mimi is rather determined not to present her own point of view, but it does make it feel lopsided. I cannot imagine what kind of choices she was presented with, and choosing to continue to care for her ill sons was certainly a choice that had consequences, but it's unclear what other options this family had. Every choice was a difficult one and relying so heavily on the daughters' accounts pulls us out of that impossible situation.

And for the last of my nitpicks, it is again no fault of Kolker's, but the science part of the narrative is quite interesting, but we find ourselves in the sad state at the end of the book where while significant changes in approach and thinking have been made, the way we treat schizophrenia has hardly changed at all and it will likely be decades before those changes come about. I think maybe it was my fault as a reader, expecting there to be some big shift around the next corner, but it could also be the way the book is structured and presented.

Yes I know this has been one of those reviews that is mostly negative even though my feelings on the book are mostly positive, but I am confident this book has enough people singing its praises that I feel its important to say them. I'd also like to note that Kolker often refers to those with schizophrenia as "mad" or "insane" and those who do not have it as "sane," which was not my favorite. There is also a really really really significant amount of domestic violence and child molestation in this book, if those are difficult topics for you, I suspect this book will be Too Much.

I requested an ARC of Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker based solely on the brief description of a family with twelve kids where 6 of the 12 suffered from schizophrenia.
I had no idea how much I would connect to the story. Like the Galvin’s I lived in Colorado Springs on the Air Force Academy off and on and recognized many places in the book.

The Galvin family’s unique place in the study of schizophrenia reminded me a bit of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, with the rather large caveat that their participation in science was voluntary. But both involve medical nonfiction that reads like something that couldn’t possibly be true. Content Warning for childhood sexual abuse. •

For fans of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this is a highly accessible read about nature vs. nurture in the cause of mental illness. Science is presented in a manner friendly to the average reader without a medical background, and is interspersed with the families experiences. Very thought-provoking and necessary as we open up about mental illnesses in our society.

After finishing this account of a family of 12 with 6 diagnosed with schizophrenia, I marvel at the way the other 6 siblings have managed to create semi-normal lives for themselves. I do wish there could have been more input from the 4 brothers who did not develop the disease as it seems to be told from the viewpoint of the two youngest (the only girls in the family) and the mother. Perhaps the fact that they moved away when leaving home speaks to the trauma of life growing up within the family. The medical research information was interesting and really helped me understand the difficult reality of finding an effective treatment for these boys.

Thanks to NetGalley and Doubleday Books for the ARC to read and review.

I usually reserve a five star reviews for books that I would read again and again. This book, well written, researched, compelling and important is an exception. The subject is fascinating, scary, and challenging. I don't know that I have it in me to dive into it twice.

The subject of this work is severe mental illness told within the context of a single family that suffered six children with serious mental illness. It reminds me in the best possible way of the book "The Family That Couldn't Sleep" by T.D. Max, and of Pete Early's work, "Crazy, a Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness".

Each work is important. Each is well worth the time of the reader, and each should lead us to greater discussion about the state of research, recognition, and treatment of mental illness.

WOW this book was a great read - I couldn't put it down, and I rarely read non-fiction. The author weaves contemporary issues into this story of a family in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, up through today, and the reader learns a lot about the history of psychotherapy in the US, but it doesn't feel like a lecture. I 100% recommend this!

Hidden Valley Road is one of the most fascinating books I’ve read in a very long time. The story of the Galvin family is heartbreaking and horrifying at the same time. The schizophrenia that afflicted 6 of the 12 Galvin children caused so much suffering and trauma to one family that it is remarkable any of them survived.

Kolker takes the clinical history of the Galvins and weaves it into a cohesive story that spans decades and concludes with a sliver of hope for the next generations of the family. It can be difficult to take a clinical history, especially one involvng mental illness, and covert it into a readable, suspenseful story that conveys the humanity of the subjects in a non-exploitive way. Kolker does a fine job of storytelling here, on par with Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter and, more recently, Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Absolutely one of the best of the year.

This incredible story of a family wrestling with mental illness behind the facade of the perfect midwestern family of the 1960s. While the narrative style seamlessly told the story of the Galvins, research was interspersed at appropriate intervals. Readers will be informed and engaged throughout. The resilience of children and the importance of family dynamics is something many readers will relate to. A non-fiction masterpiece!

Hidden Valley Road is a true story about one family with twelve siblings and six of the siblings all have schizophrenia. The book follows them from when their parents first met all the way to present day. This is a heartbreaking story about the history of schizophrenia and what it looks like today for the family. It is also a fascinating read about schizophrenia and psychology in general.

Okay wow! That’s the first thing I must say. I’m a psychology graduate and working toward my therapy certification. I have always had a massive interest in mental illness and disorders since I was diagnosed with bipolar II, 9 years ago, and have struggled with it my entire life. As someone who has been seeing psychologists and psychiatrists since I was 10 years old, this book fueled my major interest as well as felt extremely personal in what I’ve experienced thus far in my life.

I learned so much from this book when it came to the more technical side of the story. My psychiatrist never told me that there might be a connection between bipolar, autism and schizophrenia. That was a massive insight into my symptoms and life.

The more personal side of the story of the Galvin family was written so perfectly that it was super easy to read, that someone who doesn’t have an already big interest in psychology, can still understand and enjoy the entire book. I read this so fast because I just wanted to know the end result of the Galvin family’s struggles.

Massive applause for Kolker in how he researched and followed this family’s story. Truly a masterpiece. This is something I will use in my future practice as a viewpoint in how schizophrenia can affect a person. Thank you!

An absolutely fascinating nonfiction book. No wonder Oprah picked it for her Book Club!

The writing is fantastic and the book flows seamlessly, alternating between chapters on the different family members & chapters on the history behind schizophrenia and the research into what causes it. The amount of research that Kolker did for this book is highly commendable & the fact that all remaining family members agreed to him writing this book is simply amazing. I had a hard time putting it down, which is a great feat for a nonfiction book.

Thank you to NetGalley & Doubleday Books for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

So amazing. I think this book is going to be huge with our customers and I can’t wait to recommend it widely.

From the pile of Too Unbelievable To Be Fiction comes the Galvins - a family of 12 siblings, six of whom lived with Schizophrenia diagnoses. Exhaustively researched, and impeccably narrative, this book gives the reader an intimate look at this family, as well as a grasp in brain research. Remarkable.

This is a work of nonfiction that focuses on the Galvins, an American family that was made up of parents Don and Mimi, and their 12 children. The kids nearly perfectly book-ended the baby boomer generation - their oldest son was born in 1945 and the youngest daughter was born in 1965. They had 10 sons - all in a row - and then two daughters. Six of those ten sons developed schizophrenia.

Just hearing that, right away, the central mystery of the book pops into your head - how is it possible that half of the Galvin brood would have been stricken by the disease? What does that say about schizophrenia?

I would say the book is a 60/40 split between the Galvin family story and a scientific look at schizophrenia. That scientific side begins with a look at the state of the understanding the disease as well as mental illness in general around the time the children were being born. Schizophrenia was very much at the center of the nature/nurture debate. Is the illness biological, something inherited, or is it caused by environmental factors when a child is growing up?

But also, it’s made clear to us that issues surrounding mental health were spiky during this time period. You have things like eugenics, sterilization of the mentally ill, and, within the nurture argument that was prevalent at the time, a tendency to blame the parents when a child sickened.

This information lays the foundation for the family story that Kolker aims to tell. With so many kids in the house, life was very chaotic for the Galvins and even when some of the children began to show symptoms, there was very little done to acknowledge that. It comes as much less of a surprise to learn that when you consider first of all, the time period, but also, the horrible position parents were in if they took their child to get help. Care for the mentally ill was not as sophisticated back then, to say the least, and if the parents themselves feared being directly blamed for something out of their control...who would want to acknowledge that?

But we also learn more about this specific family - why the mother worked hard for a long time to keep up appearances, the delusions that each sick child experienced - they each had a very individual experience with the disease, and also - the impact that it had on the other children, particularly the daughters, the youngest two Galvin children.

Something I need to note at this point is that the family story always comes back to the two daughters, and it’s clear to me after reading this book that those were the author’s two main sources. While every child has their story told, at least to some extent, the two daughters are discussed at length. I don’t think the author is particularly forthcoming about that - he doesn’t include himself in the story at all.

You can of course argue that it’s not his story, so he should keep himself out of it. I don’t fully agree with that, because the story is going to be ever so slightly skewed depending on the direction you come at it. If you’re coming in on the side of the girls because they’re your best sources, your story is going to be a little lopsided in favor of them. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something to acknowledge.

This book had me wishing for what we can’t have - the firsthand accounts of the six sick Galvin children. That’s obviously not possible, and not only because some of them are no longer with us. To have schizophrenia is essentially to live in another reality, one that a person inhabits alone. I can only imagine it’s the most isolating, terrifying thing.

Overall, this book was a mixture of heartbreaking and enlightening. You’ll find yourself mourning alongside the family for what might have been - what they could have been if six of the boys weren’t taken from them. But at the same time, the way the author lays out the research illustrates the evolution of our understanding of schizophrenia. Where we started, what studies revealed, what we know now, and a hint at what might be possible in the future in terms of preventing and treating a disease this complex.

Things I think you should be aware of before picking this up - first and foremost, there’s a lot of potentially upsetting things in here. Also, this is, as I mentioned, a fairly well-balanced mix between science and family saga. The family sections are slightly dominant, but if you’re coming in for one of those and not the other, I don’t know how you’ll get along with it.

The strongest aspect of the book I actually found to simultaneously be its Achilles heel. Kolker obviously had a lot of access to this family over an extended period of time - at least as far back as 2017, potentially earlier, which again, he doesn’t really reveal until he discusses his sources at the end. Being that close to the family allows him to see them all, especially the sick sons, as people. He writes about them with a tremendous amount of empathy and understanding, He doesn’t other them, he considers them every step of the way.

But, getting as close as he did to the family made him add a third part that didn’t belong. I made it to the end of the second part, it felt like and ending and I was ready for it to be over. But then...the chapters just kept coming.
He was going for closure, that’s clear, but it’s closure mainly for the two daughters. He discussed the evolution of their relationship with one another, he mentions each of their children - in a way he doesn’t do with any of the other Galvin children. It felt like he tacked on that third part for them, and by doing so he lost focus of the story at large. Certain passages from part 3 could have been easily incorporated into the end of part 2. I also didn’t think he expanded enough upon the children who decided to distance themselves from the family.

One of the daughters very much stepped in as a caretaker and has that family mentality and you can feel the storytelling skewing in her favor. The choice to be a part of a family or not is every individual’s to make, especially after a traumatic childhood as all of them had, and I think the author could have considered them more in the text.

Overall, this is a very interesting book with a great writing style and a considered, compelling narrative. But those hiccups definitely held it back.

Multiple siblings in a large family living with schizophrenia, intermingling with the history of the disease and its past and current treatments. A mentally exhausting experience to read, which provides a clear understanding of the effects of this disorder on families and their suffering.

Like all excellent nonfiction, Robert Kolker’s depiction of a family plagued by mental illness proves the credo that truth truly is stranger than fiction. What makes this story incredibly captivating is the disbelief you’ll have that so much misery and pain could exist inside one family. But it’s Kolker’s impressive ability to get to the heart of the story that ends up making this book about more than just tragedy – instead, it transcends into a story about the family ties that both bind us and break us.

“Hidden Valley Road” introduces the reader to the Galvin family, lead by parents Mimi and Don. Spanning from 1945 to 1965, the two had 12 children (10 boys and 2 girls). Living on the titled road in Colorado, the Galvin family appeared to be the epitome of all-American middle-class life. While they tried to keep the facade in place for decades, the truth behind daily life at the Galvin household was something far more terrifying. By the time they reached adulthood, six of the ten boys had displayed alarming and debilitating symptoms of schizophrenia. The house on Hidden Valley road became one plagued with violence and chaos, as one child after another descended into madness. Each chapter sinks into the despair of mental illness, along with the frustrations (that still exist) with the inability of the medical community to appropriately diagnose and effectively and safely treat these types of mental disorders.

This book would have been fascinating enough from a psychology point of view or even just if you enjoy the perverse feeling you get from looking at a slowly-unfolding car accident. Instead, Kolker ups the ante by providing the reader with background on schizophrenia itself (which might sound boring but is actually immensely interesting). But above all else, the aspect that made this book so impressive was the way that Kolker dug into universal themes that impacted the Galvin family – what we’re willing to do to present a picture-perfect image to the world and the secrets we’re willing to keep even if they’re literally killing us.

Mental illness is still so misunderstood and isn’t examined enough on a thoughtful scale like it is in “Hidden Valley Road.” This story will stay with me for a long time; not just because of the horror the Galvins experienced, but more because it gave me hope that the current (and future) generations will be more willing to examine how mental illness and trauma are allowed to fester in families. There will hopefully be more brave individuals like the youngest Galvin, Mary, who eventually entered therapy to help herself heal. Plus, there are also more researchers (like the ones depicted in the book) who have decided to take on the frustratingly complex issue of ‘solving’ diseases like schizophrenia. There’s hope that instead of locking up people with mental illness and throwing away the key, there will instead be compassion and clear-cut treatments for them.

I read this book before Oprah picked it for her book club, but I’m so happy that she’s decided to feature a non-fiction title that shows what the very best in this genre can demonstrate – that we’re all more alike than we think. Every family has skeletons in the closet and only through shedding light on the darker, more shameful parts will we be able to create healthier families in the future. For now, I’ll just be feeling grateful that Kolker put this book out into the world.