Hidden Valley Road

Starred review from October 1, 2020

Once upon a time, the Galvin family seemed perfect. Father Don's work with the Air Force brought the family to (coincidentally, presciently named) Hidden Valley Road in Colorado. There, mother Mary oversaw the raising and nurturing of their dozen children--10 boys and two girls born between 1945 and 1965. But behind closed doors, violence, neglect, and abuse soon revealed even deeper issues: Six Galvin sons would be diagnosed with schizophrenia. As horrific as the family's tragedy is, their experiences provide scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health (and beyond) with invaluable insights into a long-misunderstood illness. What could easily have devolved into lurid voyeurism becomes a journalistic masterpiece in Kolker's (Lost Girls) spellbinding latest. Sean Pratt proves himself Kolker's ideal aural alter ego, avoiding all sensationalizing, narrating with the same deliberate control when he reveals a murder-suicide as when he interprets neuroscientific data. Pratt's spellbinding ability to seamlessly shift between personal stories and medical history is testimony to the book's resonating brilliance. VERDICT Whether on the page or in the ears, all libraries will want to enable readers with easy access to what will certainly be one of the most award-winning titles of the year.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 24, 2020
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.