Journalist Robert Kolker draws us into the jaw-dropping true story of the Galvin family—Mimi, Don, and their 12 children—to explore powerful themes like mental illness, our limited understanding of the human brain, trauma, resilience, and forgiveness His astonishing book follows the Galvins from the late 1940s, when Don and Mimi are a young all-American couple with seemingly infinite promise, through the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, as six of their ten sons are eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia, to the present, as the remaining family members come to terms with the shame, denial, secretiveness, and chaos caused by the stigma around this horrific disease of the brain. Kolker’s first book, Lost Girls, fell squarely into the true-crime camp, and his ability to build suspense and ferret out hidden truths is a large part of the reason that Hidden Valley Road is such a page-turning read, despite the seriousness and complexity of the subject matter. We can honestly say this is one of the most gripping, fascinating, and moving portraits of a family that we have ever read. It filled us with compassion and a sense of urgency about talking about mental illness openly and honestly.
