A review by writersrelief
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense medium-paced

4.0

 
Robert Kolker’s LOST GIRLS was a fascinating and sympathetic portrait of a series of unresolved murders of sex workers in Long Island, and the valiant efforts by their mothers to identify their murderer. He brings his keen journalism, humanistic sympathy, and thrilling narrative skills to an equally harrowing true-life story in HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD. 
 
The Galvin family seems like the ideal American family: well-off, civically involved, and outstanding members of the Colorado Springs community. But as their twelve children grow up, a dark secret begins to emerge—six of the children turn out to have schizophrenia. Several spend their lives in and out of mental institutions, and one even commits a grisly crime before taking his own life. This leaves the two youngest daughters vulnerable to their brothers’ random outbursts and unwanted advances. At the same time, the psychiatric field grapples with what causes schizophrenia, and often lacks the resources to provide the family the help they need. 
 
At once an epic family drama and a critique of the psychiatric field, HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD is a frequently disturbing and horrifying read—yet it is also elegantly written, informative, and insightful. Kolker’s examination of the stops and starts in psychiatry’s research into schizophrenia are both enlightening and frustrating. The “nature vs. nurture” debate played a large role in schizophrenia research, and the book makes a strong argument that semantics like these distracted from the research that could have helped the Galvins and innumerable other families. 
 
The family drama element of HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD is also extremely powerful. We felt equally for the brothers whose lives were destroyed by schizophrenia as for the siblings who left their family for their own safety. One could argue that the book prioritizes the perspective of the non-schizophrenic siblings, and that Kolker could go more in-depth about who the schizophrenic brothers were outside of their neurology. But HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD does offer plenty of insight into how oppressive, image-driven family dynamics played a role in triggering underlying mental illness, giving credence to both nature AND nurture playing a role. 
 
While HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD is a fantastic read, readers should be aware that this book contains moderate violence, portrayals of mental illness, and incestuous sexual assault against minors. 
 

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