Hidden Valley Road Book Summary - Hidden Valley Road Book explained in key points

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Hidden Valley Road summary

Name: Hidden Valley Road
Rating: 4.3 (34 reviews)
Author: Robert Kolker

Robert Kolker

Inside the Mind of an American Family

4.3 (34 ratings)

31 mins

Topics

Memoirs

Table of Contents

Hidden Valley Road
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What’s in it for me? Discover the fascinating story of the Galvins, a family like no other.

Mimi and Don Galvin were barely out of their teens when they got married, having tied the knot just before Don went off to fight in the Pacific during World War Two. But they were deeply in love and full of ambition. Don dreamt of being an influential figure in the State Department, whispering into the ears of future presidents.

But things didn’t work out that way. Don had a hard time transitioning out of the military and into political science. Eventually, he joined the newly formed Air Force as a high-ranking officer. This meant moving to Colorado, where the headquarters were being built. At first, Mimi wasn’t thrilled, but she soon found it to be a beautiful, wide-open space to raise her kids. Twelve kids, in fact.

They came in quick succession. The first ten were boys, the last two, to Mimi’s delight, were girls. This is the story of this unusual family and how they became a central piece of the ongoing research into schizophrenia and the biology of mental illness.

A note before we begin: Potentially disturbing scenes occur in blink four, where suicide and sexual assault are described.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

why researchers have sought out families like the Galvins;
why schizophrenia has long been the subject of debate; and
how certain medications can have fatal side effects.

After moving into a new home on Hidden Valley Road, the first signs of illness appeared in two of the Galvin children.

In 1963, the Galvins were living in a modern, split-level house on Hidden Valley Road in the Woodmen Valley area, just outside Colorado Springs. Their house was one of the first to be built on a four-mile stretch of dirt road in a neighborhood developed for families of the Air Force Academy.

The key message in this blink is: After moving into a new home on Hidden Valley Road, the first signs of illness appeared in two of the Galvin children.

Their new home was just enough room for Mimi, Don, and their 12 kids. They were able to squeeze a massive table with six seats on each side and one on each end into the dining room, and the living room was big enough for the boys to indulge in their wrestling matches, which had become a household feature over the past ten years.

Often, these matches would get overheated and turn into real fights, especially between the two oldest boys, Donald and Jim. By the time they moved to Hidden Valley Road, the two brothers had practically become mortal enemies. But this tension was somewhat relieved by Donald heading off to Colorado State University the same year they moved into the new house.

But something else was going on with Donald and Jim. While Donald was the all-star athlete and seemed intent on making his father proud, Jim had always been a rebel. So, when Jim got expelled from school for sneaking into an Air Force jet and messing around in the cockpit, Mimi and Don brushed it off as regrettable teenage shenanigans.

They did a similar thing when Donald was 17 years old and violently broke ten dishes while standing in the kitchen. Typical teenage drama, they thought. But things got worse as Donald began his sophomore year at Colorado State. Soon Mimi and Don wouldn’t be able to brush it aside so easily.

Between September 1964 and the fall of 1965, Donald visited the campus health center four times. First, to treat a mysterious cat bite. The second visit was due to his concerns that he might accidentally catch syphilis from his roommate. The third time he arrived with a back sprain and was told to spend the night in the infirmary. As he explained it, one of his brothers had jumped on him from behind while he was visiting his family.

On his fourth visit, Donald arrived with serious burns and clothing that had obviously been on fire. It turned out that Donald had jumped into a bonfire.

In 1966, Donald received his first diagnosis of schizophrenia.

None of Donald’s visits to the health center were easily explained. After the bonfire incident, Donald received his first psychiatric evaluation. While the clinical psychologist found evidence of “emotional conflicts,” Donald was allowed to resume his classes.

But things didn’t improve. Donald dove headfirst into a relationship with Marilee, a fellow classmate. When the relationship fell apart, Donald began to spiral. He spent hours on the phone, missed his rent payments, and moved into a vacant cellar near campus.

Mental health institutions had a bad reputation in the 1960s.

At the time Donald became ill, one of the primary theories about schizophrenia was that it was caused by the schizophrenogenic mother. But the definition of a schizophrenogenic mother was never fully made clear. These maternal figures could have been overly affectionate or completely lacking affection – either way, they were seen to cause “severe warp and rejection” in someone’s childhood, which was thought to at least partly cause schizophrenia to manifest later in life.

Mimi and Don knew that this theory was so popular that it had the potential to bring scandal and shame to the family if they committed Donald to a psychiatric facility. But they had other reasons to conceal Donald’s illness, too.

Violence escalated among the ill siblings, culminating in tragedy.

In 1970, both Donald and Jim’s relationships were in trouble. Donald tried to make things better with his wife by agreeing to couples therapy, but the fights didn’t stop. Then, one night, Donald followed Jean when she stormed out of the house. He talked about wanting to kill her. That was the last straw.

Jean told Donald she was going to leave and move to Oregon. The next night, Donald attempted to dose both himself and Jean with two lethal cyanide tablets. Luckily, Jean was able to get away and call the police. Donald was booked for an alleged suicide and homicide attempt. The authorities determined he should be committed to the hospital in Pueblo.

As more siblings became ill, one of the Galvins was thrown a lifeline.

All of the Galvins were crushed by the loss of Brian. But Michael, the fifth son, was especially torn up about it. He had recently traveled to California to visit Brian, a talented musician who’d started a new band called Bagshot Row. When Brian died, Michael was on his way to see him but had stopped in Los Angeles. Maybe if he’d been there, Michael thought, Brian would be OK.

Unbeknownst to anyone but Mimi and Don, Brian had been prescribed an antipsychotic called Navene not long before his death. But after his death, it became apparent to everyone that the difficulties Donald and Jim were experiencing had affected Brian as well.

By 1982, six siblings from the Galvin family were diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Mary was ten years old, watching her 13-year-old sister being driven off to live with the Gary’s in Denver. She felt alone and helpless. All she could do was cry her heart out. Why couldn’t she leave too? Was something wrong with her? Was she not good enough?

Every once in a while, Mary would get to visit Margaret in Denver. One day, her brother Matt visited the Gary house as well. He’d turned out to be a very talented potter and brought along a vase as a gift to the Garys. But after he arrived, he stripped naked and smashed the vase on the floor. This was the first sign anyone had seen to suggest that Matt would be the fifth Galvin, and the second hockey brother, to fall ill.

The Galvin family was a perfect subject for researchers.

By the end of the 1970s, researchers were starting to get a clearer picture of the biological nature of schizophrenia. So much so, that the idea of the illness stemming from bad parenting became a lot harder to scientifically justify.

For instance, in 1979, Richard Wyatt, a neurophysicist with the National Institute of Mental Health, published a study that showed how people with schizophrenia had a larger amount of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain ventricles located in the amygdala and hippocampus regions. Not only are these regions related to how aware we are of our surroundings, but the study showed that the larger the ventricles are, the less effective neuroleptic drugs were.

Thanks to DNA from the Galvin family, some progress has been made in understanding schizophrenia.

Mimi had been waiting a long time for someone like Lynn DeLisi to show up. Since Donald’s illness, Mimi had been involved in the caretaking of each of her sick sons, so getting the necessary blood samples for DeLisi was relatively easy. The only one who didn’t cooperate was Richard, who, like John, had distanced himself from the family.

Right away, in February of 1986, just months after visiting the Galvins, DeLisi’s data gathered from one thousand families confirmed Richard Wyatt’s research about enlarged ventricles. She also shared the samples taken from the Galvins with the Coriell Institute for Medical Research so that others could have access to the DNA for research purposes.

As researchers got closer to identifying relevant genes, they were no closer to improving the medication.

For Lindsay, Dr. Freedman’s theories around sensory gating made a lot of sense. She’d noticed how even white background noise, like the whirring of a fan, could irritate her brothers. In the 1990s, many of the Galvins agreed to sit with Dr. Freedman as he ran tests. These tests, and the tissue samples he collected, helped Freedman track down the biological home of sensory gating: it’s called the ɑ7 (or alpha-7) receptor.

The ɑ7 receptor is responsible for communication in the brain, sending messages from one neuron to another. This communication also requires a compound called acetylcholine. As Freedman discovered, people with schizophrenia have around half the amount of ɑ7 receptors that an average person has. Remarkably, he tracked the problem down to a gene called CHRNA7, which is used to make the ɑ7 receptor, and an overall lack of acetylcholine, which also triggers the creation of the receptors.

In 2009, diligent research into genetic links finally began to pay off.

For years, it seemed like Lynn DeLisi had also hit a wall in her research. In 2000, her work was cut short when Pfizer bought the company funding her project and abruptly canceled it. But it was just a matter of time before someone else saw the value in her efforts.

The key message in this blink is: In 2009, diligent research into genetic links finally began to pay off.

While some Galvins remain bitter about the past, others are more hopeful. 

In 2016, DeLisi paid a return visit to the Galvin family. Since her last visit, Lindsay has stepped up to become the central organizer and unlikely caretaker of the family, especially once Mimi became sick. Don, who was never the same after his stroke, died in 2003. Mimi lasted until 2017 and remained positive until the very end.

The key message here is: While some Galvins remain bitter about the past, others are more hopeful.

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What is Hidden Valley Road about?

Hidden Valley Road (2020) tells the remarkable story of the Galvin family of 12 children, half of whom were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Remarkably, the Galvins went on to become one of our best hopes for understanding the biological nature of this often misunderstood mental illness.

Who should read Hidden Valley Road?

Anyone interested in a deeper understanding of mental health
People curious about the history of schizophrenia
Fans of stories about perseverance and overcoming the odds

About the Author

Robert Kolker is a best-selling author and investigative journalist whose work has appeared in publications such as New York Magazine and Bloomberg Businessweek. His highly acclaimed book, Lost Girls (2013), about a series of unsolved killings on Long Island, was adapted into a film of the same name released in 2020.

Categories with Hidden Valley Road

Biography & Memoir Science Health & Nutrition

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