Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

This is a riveting and intimate portrait of the Galvins, Don and Mimi, and their twelve children, all born between 1945 and 1965.. Six of those children were eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. This was an incredible rarity and so, not surprisingly, the childrens genetic material and family histories became the focus of research. Thanks to the Galvins, researchers now have a wellspring of valuable information to help them discover ways of treating and predicting schizophrenia. The Galvins genetic makeup added a unique contribution to schizophrenia research.

But this is far more than a look at one familys contributions to the history, research, and treatment of the disease. It is also an intimate tale of the parents, each of their children and how the ill family members affected the entire family, including those siblings who never became schizophrenic ( but were far from unscarred) . All of the childrens compelling life stories are interspersed with the sections focusing on the way schizophrenia was perceived and treated from the 1960s through recent times.

This makes for an often heart wrenching look at what family life was like for parents raising six mentally ill chilldren, trying hard to pretend everything was fine, everything was normal. And when that no longer worked, there are revelations about how those children were sometimes subject to treatment that would be seen as harsh and shocking today.

But mostly, for me, this is a powerful work which both illuminates the history of schizophrenia treatments as well as reveals the impact of the disease on a specific family. After I finished this book, I felt I knew each of the Galvin family members as individuals. Robert Kolkers writing struck me as incredibly compassionate as well as well-researched and that made it particularly compelling to me.

This book was incredible. I was unaware of the Galvin family and not very knowledgeable on schizophrenia either. Through this book, I learned so much about the heart-breaking destruction schizophrenia and other mental illnesses can wreak on families and the history and science behind the study of schizophrenia, all through the lens of a fascinating biography on a family I had never heard of before. Kolkor does a excellent job weaving the scientific search for a cure for schizophrenia with a harrowing tale of a family affected by the disease.

At heart this the story of the family of Mimi and Don Galvin and their 12 children (yes, 12! Ten boys and two girls.) Kolkore begins with Mimi and Don’s courtship and marriage and early life in the military and Don’s deployment. Then he moves on to them building their life and family out in Colorado at the Air Force Academy. Kolkor takes great care in developing the characters in the Galvin family, especially Mimi, so that when tragedy strikes we care deeply about what they are going through. He does an excellent job of showing them as 3 dimensional people, some of whom do horrific things, whether in the throws of mental illness or not. The story of this family itself is fascinating and heartbreaking, even without the chapters on research into schizophrenia.

While telling the story of Galvin family and their many trials and tribulations, Kolkor weaves in chapters on the history of schizophrenia, in particular how it has been viewed and studied historically. Eventually, he is telling the parallel story of several researchers/doctors who are looking for the cause (and perhaps a cure) to schizophrenia. Eventually the two stories collide when the Galvins are found by the researchers looking for families with multiple instances of the disease.

Fundamentally, this is the story of a family and Kolkor tells it beautifully. Much of the focus is on the youngest Mary/Lindsay and the mother Mimi, but for a story with 14 main characters, I think Kolkor does a great job of developing all of them. Some of the brothers who didn’t have breakdowns receive less attention, but they also tended to keep their distance from the family after leaving home. The youngest sisters and the mother along with the oldest two brothers become the main focus. On the chapters about the family he lists the names of everyone, adding as children are born and erasing them as they die. I found that a very effective way to keep everyone straight and to illustrate poignantly when they leave.

I highly recommend this book to anyone–whether you have mental illness in your family or not. It is well-written and accessible but also poignant. I teared up a few times. I think Kolkor does such a great job of illustrating the challenging dynamic and feeling the sisters in particular feel as they become adults and try to come to terms with everything that happened to them and their concerns for their own children. Go out and get this book!

I started doing Psychaitry in 1990. If only we had this new information when i was a student. I worked with many schizophrenic patients. This book has opened my eyes. It has revolutionized psychiatry and schizophrenia for ever. I couldnt put it down. What an amazing find. Thank you.

This is a good piece of work. The author has clearly done his homework and dispenses interesting knowledge about the changing attitudes towards schizophrenia along the way. Not at all surprised to hear the boys had been abused by a priest- how does the church consistently escape responsibility for its horrible and persistent crimes against women and children? Very thought provoking regarding the nature nurture of schizophrenia, a term that has outworn its usefulness if it ever had any. It will likely be replaced by a psychotic spectrum disorder. There is something about this family that keeps putting one in mind of the kennedys. It is almost like a curse descends upon this family and there is no going back

This book is good in so many levels…. as a story (reality is stranger than fiction), as a science non fiction raising awareness on mental health and how difficult it is to diagnose, prevent and treat.

Heartbreaking at times….

I’m sure very soon this will be a movie.

** I felt the prologue gave too much away, like those bad movie trailers that tell you the whole movie in two minutes.

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