"Hidden Valley Road," by Robert Kolker

🧠 Our first non-fiction selection of the year, and one that has induced accolades far & wide! Our group has enjoyed memoirs, true crime, and historical development books, and this one follows American medical science and psychology through one "picture-perfect" mid-century American family. 🧠

A United States air force officer, his wife, and their 12(!!) children (10 sons & 2 daughters), are spotlighted for their initial and continued assistance in a number of scientific sub-fields we all benefit from today. A tv docuseries (available for streaming) has been adapted about the Galvin family. Almost 160,000 reviewers have given this title a 4.2/5-star rating on Goodreads and Amazon. Sure to induce lively conversation, let's explore some history that has occurred within our own lifetimes!

From Goodreads:

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. 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.