Recommended Reading | 5
We took a bit of a break since our last reading recommendation, but now we’re back! We hope to pick back up offering book recommendations every few months.
Why offer reading recommendations? Reading can be a great self-care practice: to help distract from intrusive thoughts, to learn something new, understand yourself a little deeper, or find connection in others’ stories. Therapist Laura Miles says, “Anyone can connect with reading; it just takes a bit of searching sometimes. Try out different genres, different writers, different styles. There’s something out there for everyone!”
This month’s recommendation is Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker. When I first heard the premise of this book, I thought it was going to be a bit sensationalized. It’s subject is Don and Mimi Galvin and their twelve children...six of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia.
While there are accounts of violence and sexual abuse that may be difficult for some readers, I found the writing to be compassionate and informative.
On the outside, Don and Mimi Galvin had a dream family. Don was in the Air Force, and his work at the Air Force Academy took the family to Colorado, where they got involved in the community, sports (several of the brothers who would eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia were high school hockey stars), and even falconry. According to his family, it’s thanks to Don Galvin that the falcon is mascot of the Air Force Academy. Later, his work with the Federation of Rocky Mountain States had them rubbing elbows with celebrities like Georgia O’Keefe. But as Donald, the eldest brother, entered his early twenties, he began to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia. As the 1960s and 70s progressed, five of his brothers would also be diagnosed with the disease.
Parallel to telling the Galvin family’s story, Kolker also traces the scientific community’s study of schizophrenia. Early researchers argued it was all about nurture, and blamed mothers, specifically, for causing the disease in their children. Other scientists said schizophrenia was caused by nature: Kolker explores how DNA samples from the Galvin family were a key part in genetic research still going on today.
I found Kolker’s writing about the two youngest Galvin children, Margaret and Lindsay, especially compelling. Though they were spared the disease, their childhoods were incredibly difficult. Both grappled with processing childhood abuse, as well as difficult relationships with their mother as she sent one daughter to live with wealthy friends and kept another home in a volatile environment. As adults, both Margaret and Lindsay worked to heal from trauma, while also assisting scientists in their efforts of solving the medical mystery of what happened to their brothers.
It’s key that Kolker subtitles his book “inside the mind of an American family.” While some would see twelve kids as an extreme, and so many cases of schizophrenia as even more shocking, at its core, so much of what the family went through is ordinary. Parents at odds with children. Siblings keeping secrets. Caregivers seeking treatment and making the best decisions with what’s available in front of them. All at odds with the real extreme: a disease so complicated, even mapping the human genome hasn’t unraveled it.
If you’re interested in understanding the big picture of mental health research and treatment in America, give this book a read.
Note: The link included in this blog to Old Town Books is not an affiliate link.
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