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Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

by Robert Kolker (Goodreads Author)

4.15 97,607 ratings 9,881 reviews

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The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream.... MoreThe heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

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 another, 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 Institute 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 amid 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. Less

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Average rating 4.15 · 97,607 ratings · 9,881 reviews

Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing
over 2 years ago

Meet the Galvin family......

THIS IS A MIND BLOWING STORY!!!!

FASCINATING - UNBELIEVABLE-
RIVETING-
INFORMATIVE-
HEARTBREAKING!

This is one of those non-fiction books that often reads like fiction. It’s incredibly intimate....in details, descriptions, character development, sto ...more

Diane S ☔ rated it really liked it
over 2 years ago

Shelves: nfr-2020

The odds of reading two books at the same time, where both families have twelve children, has to be high. That, though is there only commanality. I've never read anything like this, it was both hard to read because if subject matter and well done. Mimi and Don Kohler wanted ...more

Jessica Woodbury rated it really liked it
over 2 years ago

Shelves: arc-provided-by-publisher , nonfiction

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. 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. ...more

Beverly rated it it was amazing
over 1 year ago

The Scourge of Schizophrenia

This frightening and seemingly unfathomable, true story is about a family with 12 children in which 6 of the boys develop schizophrenia. So much suffering is hard to take in. For not only did the sick boys endure unbelievable hardships, the well ...more

Julie rated it really liked it
over 1 year ago

Shelves: 2021 , non-fiction , doubleday , biography , e-book

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker is a 2020 Doubleday publication.

This is a hard review to write.

I knew going in the book was bound to be a difficult read, but I had no idea how emotionally draining it would become. I also didn’t re ...more

JanB rated it it was amazing
almost 2 years ago

Shelves: 2020-reads , audiobook , non-fiction

“For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted in the direction of the sick family member. Even if just one child has schizophrenia, everything about the internal logic of that family changes.”

Few of us “For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted in the direction of the sick family member. Even if just one child has schizophrenia, everything about the internal logic of that family changes.”

Few of us have been untouched by mental illness, either in our own families or in one we know. Most families with one mentally ill child struggles. Having six is unfathomable.

Between 1945 and 1965, Mimi and Don Galvin had 12 children, 10 boys and two girls. They were the picture of a successful and beautiful family, but what was happening behind closed doors was anything but. Eventually, 6 of their 10 boys were affected by schizophrenia. The average age of onset is late teens/early 20s so by the time the oldest son exhibited symptoms, their family was complete.

The search for an explanation and a cure became all-encompassing. The lack of knowledge in the medical and psychological community and what this family endured, especially the mother, was heartbreaking and infuriating. The prevailing wisdom at the time was nurture (especially the mother’s role) trumped nature. The children who were well were profoundly affected as well, especially the girls.

Interspersed amid the personal story of this family, the author takes us through the history of schizophrenia and the scientific advances that have been made, and he does it in an accessible way. The Gavin family, with so many affected, was instrumental into the study of the disease.

There is no happy ending, for there is no cure and the treatment was often as devastating as the illness itself. However, the author treats the subject with compassion and understanding which sheds a light on mental illness and its devastating effects.

I’m certain that every family so affected by mental illness has a different story to tell, and it must be remembered that this is simply the Gavin family’s story, and not indicative of all families with a mentally ill member. Each son’s disease presented differently. The Gavin family had extenuating circumstances with the sheer number of children affected and the veil of secrecy, denial, and dysfunction in the home. But what family dealing with their circumstances wouldn’t be dysfunctional? We’ve come a long way in the field of mental illness, but not long enough.

I applaud the family members who were incredibly brave in allowing the author access and allowing such a painful personal story to be told in the hope of furthering understanding and removing the veil of secrecy and shame that often accompanies mental illness. ...more

Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) rated it liked it
about 2 years ago

Shelves: biography-memoir , audio , america , nonfiction

WORST. PARENTS. EVER.
This book was a bit of a chaotic hot mess at the beginning, and I almost gave up on it a couple of times. The author meanders through long descriptions of sewing shut the eyes of birds for falconry, then into tangents about the history of studying mental ...more

Olive Fellows (abookolive) rated it really liked it
about 1 year ago

Shelves: psychology , history

This is a horrifying, yet fascinating look at a family in which six out of twelve children were diagnosed with schizophrenia. The author tells the story of this family while also discussing what was understood about the disease in the 50s/60s. The vast majority of this book ...more

Tammy rated it really liked it
over 2 years ago

This is a harrowing and intricate nonfiction account of an all-American family of twelve (ten boys and two girls) born between 1945 and 1965. I can’t begin to imagine having a family of this size much less cope with the onset and aftermath of six of the boys’ schizophrenia. ...more

Jen rated it really liked it
over 1 year ago

Yikes. This was a disturbing read on so many levels and so dense. It’s a work of nonfiction. Mimi and Don Galvin decided to have 12 kids. Why???? Six of those children, all male, developed schizophrenia. Yet, the parents were too busy trying to be the Joneses rather than add ...more

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Book details

Hardcover, 377 pages

Published April 7th 2020 by Doubleday Books

ISBN: 038554376X (ISBN13: 9780385543767)
Edition language: English
Original title: Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family
Literary Awards: PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, Goodreads Choice Award

See all 39 editions

About this author

Robert Kolker

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I'm the author of Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family (Doubleday, 2020) and Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery (Harper, 2013). ...more

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