Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

The tragic story of a mid-century American family with twelve children, six of them were diagnosed with schizophrenia, which became science's greatest hope in the search to comprehend the condition.

"It reads like a medical detective story and provides light on a subject that affects so many of us: mental illness." —Oprah Winfrey, "The Oprah Winfrey Show"

The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, TIME, and other publications have named it a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR.

The Galvins, Don and Mimi, appeared to be enjoying the American dream. Don's Air Force job led them to Colorado after WWII, where their twelve children neatly spanned the baby boom: the eldest was born in 1945 and the youngest in 1965. A family like the Galvins had an established script in those years—aspiration, hard labor, upward mobility, domestic harmony—and they worked hard to fulfill it. Behind the scenes, however, a different narrative was unfolding: psychological collapse, horrific violence, and secret abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the 10 Galvin boys had been classified as schizophrenia, one after the other. How could all of this befall a single family?

The events that transpired within the house on Hidden Valley Road were so remarkable that the Galvins were one of the first families to be investigated by the National Institute of Mental Health. From the age of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the hunt for genetic markers for the disease, their narrative presents a shadow history of the science of schizophrenia, always among fundamental disputes regarding the nature of the illness itself. Unbeknownst to the Galvins, samples of their DNA were used in decades of genetic study that continues today, paving the way for future generations' treatment, prediction, and ultimately elimination of the disease.

Robert Kolker, a bestselling and award-winning novelist, explores one family's remarkable heritage of pain, love, and hope with clarity and compassion.