Hidden Valley Road

The book was selected for the revival of Oprah's Book Club. It debuted at number one on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. The book was also named one of "The 10 Best Books of 2020" by The New York Times Book Review and as one of the year's most critically acclaimed non-fiction books.

Robert Kolker was originally approached by the two Galvin sisters, Margaret Galvin Johnson and Lindsay (née Mary) Galvin Rauch, to write about the family's struggle and ordeal; he used it as a backdrop to explore the medical research and understanding about mental illness. Kolker interviewed family matriarch Mimi Galvin as part of his research; she shared the various theories and rumors that had spread about their family and how they all struggled to get answers about the condition.

Studies implicated two genes, SHANK2 and CHRNA7, which were passed on to the boys from their mother.

Plot

Hidden Valley Road is a true story about the Galvin family, an American family from Colorado with twelve children, six of whom are diagnosed with schizophrenia. The eldest, Donald Galvin, was born in 1945, and the youngest, Mary (who later changed her name to Lindsay) was born in 1965. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten boys (Donald, James, Brian, Joseph, Matthew and Peter) were diagnosed with schizophrenia. The Galvins became one of the first families to be studied by the National Institute of Mental Health, with their DNA samples and experiences forming the cornerstone of research for the disease in the mid-1900s.