Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * ONE OF GQ 's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY * 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.
"Reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness." --Oprah Winfrey
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.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
"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. There was a script for a family like the Galvins--hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they all tried to play their parts. But behind the closed doors of the house on Hidden Valley Road was a far different reality: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, and hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after the other, were diagnosed with schizophrenia. And the other six children stood by, horrified, with no way of knowing whether they would be next. What took place 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. In a tour de force of narrative nonfiction, award-winning journalist Robert Kolker...tells the intimate story of the Galvins alongside the epic tale of science's quest to uncover the true nature of a mystifying disease. Each mentally ill brother emerges as wholly individual, with remarkably different expressions of the same disorder. The two youngest Galvins, the only girls, are indelible characters: best friends, both victimized by their brothers, who make sharply different choices about how to cope. The Galvins' story crests in a breakthrough that, thanks to their unique DNA, offers hope of eliminating schizophrenia forever."-- Back cover.
Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Once upon a time, the Galvin family seemed perfect. Father Don's work with the Air Force brought the family to (coincidentally, presciently named) Hidden Valley Road in Colorado. There, mother Mary oversaw the raising and nurturing of their dozen children--10 boys and two girls born between 1945 and 1965. But behind closed doors, violence, neglect, and abuse soon revealed even deeper issues: Six Galvin sons would be diagnosed with schizophrenia. As horrific as the family's tragedy is, their experiences provide scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health (and beyond) with invaluable insights into a long-misunderstood illness. What could easily have devolved into lurid voyeurism becomes a journalistic masterpiece in Kolker's (Lost Girls) spellbinding latest. Sean Pratt proves himself Kolker's ideal aural alter ego, avoiding all sensationalizing, narrating with the same deliberate control when he reveals a murder-suicide as when he interprets neuroscientific data. Pratt's spellbinding ability to seamlessly shift between personal stories and medical history is testimony to the book's resonating brilliance. VERDICT Whether on the page or in the ears, all libraries will want to enable readers with easy access to what will certainly be one of the most award-winning titles of the year.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC
Publishers Weekly Review
Journalist Kolker (Lost Girls) delivers a powerful look at schizophrenia and the quest to understand it. He focuses on a much-studied case: that of Colorado couple Don and Mimi Galvin's 12 children, born between 1945 and 1965, six of whom were diagnosed with the illness. Drawing on extensive interviews with family members and close acquaintances, he creates a taut and often heartbreaking narrative of the Galvins' travails, which included a murder-suicide and sexual abuse. Their story also allows Kolker to convey how ideas about schizophrenia's cause changed over the 20th century, from theories blaming controlling and emotionally repressive mothers (a type epitomized by Mimi Galvin) to views of the disease as biologically determined--a hypothesis researchers hoped to use the family to substantiate. In one especially moving passage, Kolker catches up in 2017 with one of the Galvin girls' daughters in college, where she is interning in a neuroscience lab with hopes of researching schizophrenia. Kolker concludes that while "biology is destiny, to a point," everyone is "a product of the people who surround us--the people we're forced to grow up with, and the people we choose to be with later." This is a haunting and memorable look at the impact of mental illness on multiple generations. (Apr.)
Booklist Review
Best-selling, award-winning journalist Kolker (Lost Girls, 2013) takes a bracing look at the history of the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia by exploring the staggering tragedies of the Galvin family. In this stunning, riveting chronicle crackling with intelligence and empathy, he recounts how, during the 1970s, six of the dozen Galvin children were diagnosed as schizophrenic, each suffering varying degrees of violence and horror associated with that illness. Through copious interviews and extensive research, Kolker is able to bring readers into the family's seemingly perfect middle-class life. With a determinedly busy and blissfully distracted father (his obsession with falconry was often more important to him than his children) and a hyperfocused mother firmly attached to her domestic ideals, the environment was rife for secrets and hidden abuse. Amidst detailed descriptions of sibling rivalries and fights that terrorized the younger children, Kolker illustrates how the Galvins fell to pieces. Into this gripping personal tale he weaves the larger history of schizophrenia research and how the family eventually came to the attention of scientists striving to find a cure. Kolker tackles this extraordinarily complex story so brilliantly and effectively that readers will be swept away. An exceptional, unforgettable, and significant work that must not be missed.
Kirkus Book Review
One family's history reveals the mystery of schizophrenia.In a riveting and disquieting narrative, Kolker (Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, 2013) interweaves a biography of the Galvin family with a chronicle of medicine's treatment of, and research into, schizophrenia. Don and Mimi Galvin had 12 children10 boys and two girlsborn between 1945 and 1965. Religious beliefsboth parents were Catholicwere not the only reason for their fecundity. Mimi seemed to crave the distinction of "being known as a mother who could easily accomplish such a thing." In addition, Kolker speculates, the children may have assuaged an abiding feeling of abandonment, including by a husband more focused on his career than his family. Mimi was a perfectionist who controlled every aspect of the children's lives: chores, enriching after-school activities, and feelings, which she believed should best be repressed. Insisting that they were raising a model family, the Galvins refused to acknowledge problems, such as violent fights among the older brothers, which the parents dismissed as merely roughhousing. The other brothers felt lost, ignored, "less than safe, treated like a number and not a person." The eldest, Donald, was the first to exhibit signs of schizophrenia, with bizarre behavior that repeatedly landed him in mental hospitals; soon, five brothers followed, all with the same diagnosis, manifested somewhat differently, including sibling sexual abuse. Meanwhile, Mimi pretended everything was normaluntil she could not hide the family's suffering. With each diagnosis, "she became more of a prisonerconfined by secrets, paralyzed by the power that the stigma of mental illness held over her." Kolker deftly follows the psychiatric, chemical, and biological theories proposed to explain schizophrenia and the various treatments foisted upon the brothers. Most poignantly, he portrays the impact on the unafflicted children of the brothers' illness, an oppressive emotional atmosphere, and the family's festering secrets. By the 1980s, the Galvins became subjects of researchers investigating a genetic basis for the illness; those extensive medical records inform this compelling tale.A family portrait of astounding depth and empathy. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Author notes provided by Syndetics
ROBERT KOLKER is the New York Times bestselling author of Lost Girls , named one of the New York Times 's 100 Notable Books and one of Publishers Weekly 's Top Ten Books of 2013. As a journalist, his work has appeared in New York magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, O magazine,and Men's Journal. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the 2011 Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.