Review of HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD
Non-fiction so good you’ll think it’s fiction
Schizophrenia is one of my favorite areas of research in the social and behavioral sciences. Partly due to the complexity of the disorder and how it manifests. Partly due to the revolutionary insights about the nature of the disorder from the field of genetics. And partly because of the recency with which science has begun to even have somewhat of a handle on the illness.
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker has been a highly recommended book since it was first published in 2020. After finally getting around to reading it, I can see why.
Wow.
This book is so intense, so wild and unimaginable, that it seems as though it has to be fiction. Or at least highly embellished. But it’s not.
Kolker presents the true story of the Galvin family in Colorado Springs in the 1940s and onward. Don and Mimi Galvin had 12 children, 10 of them boys, beginning in 1945. Beginning when the oldest was young adult, six of the 10 boys went insane. One by one, the Galvin boys were losing their minds. Why? What was happening to them?
Hidden Valley Road tells the remarkable story of what went on in the Galvin family home where half of the children had been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Through this, Kolker also tells the story of schizophrenia research through the lens of genetics, and provides great insight to the treatment of severe mental illness in institutional settings, which was commonplace in this era. I’ll never not be shocked about how we treated mental illness in institutions as recently as we have.
The Gavin family also had two daughters – their two youngest children. They are, in my opinion, the main characters in this story. Growing up enduring the abuse by their sick brothers the way they did, transcending it, and being the main glue holding the family together in the later years is truly remarkable.
I absolutely loved this book. My jaw dropped to the floor multiple times, and I could not get through it fast enough. I listened to it on audio and the performance of Sean Pratt is phenomenal. I’m sure it would be great as a physical read, too, but the narration is so good I’d recommend considering audio if you like listening to books.
Published: April 2020
Format: Audio
If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:
DSM: A History of Psychiatry’s Bible by Allan V. Horwitz (2021)
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover (2018)
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