Susannah Cahalan, author of Brain on Fire and The Great Pretender This book is a triumph, an unforgettable story that you should read right now.” Kolker writes about the Galvin family with elegance and insight while weaving together the decades long quest to understand the genetics of schizophrenia, somehow creating a story that is as haunting and intriguing as a great gothic novel. Robert Kolker dives into the exceptional story of one family besieged by humanity’s most mysterious malady. “A marvel of reportage, research, and style, Hidden Valley Road raises the bar on what is possible in narrative nonfiction. Cosmopolitan, Best Non-Fiction Books of 2020 “True-crime fanatics, this one's for you. mind-blowing." Kolker brings every member of the family to life.” “ Hidden Valley Road vividly conveys not only the inner experience of schizophrenia but its effects on the families whose members are afflicted. “At once deeply compassionate and chilling.” Sam Dolnick, The New York Times Book Review But Hidden Valley Road is more than a narrative of despair, and some of the most compelling chapters come from its other half, as a medical mystery.” Kolker tells their story with great compassion, burrowing inside the particular delusions and hospitalizations of each brother while chronicling the family’s increasingly desperate search for help. “The curse of the Galvin family is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Hidden Valley Road is destined to become a classic of narrative nonfiction.” A weave of gripping reportage and scientific detective story. “A feat of empathy and narrative journalism.” “ Hidden Valley Road is a riveting true story of an American family that reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness.” Praise For Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family…
With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope. 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. 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. 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. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. 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. 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. 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.ĭon and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, TIME, Slate, Smithsonian, The New York Post, and Amazon ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY ONE OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR
0 kommentar(er)
