Robert Kolker - Hidden Valley Road Virtual Event

Robert Kolker - Hidden Valley Road Virtual Event

Wednesday, Jun 10, 2020 7:30 PM

Location:
Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta on Zoom

Join our partner, the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta, for a Zoom Live event with New York Times bestselling author, Robert Kolker, for a discussion of his latest book, “Hidden Valley Road.”

The recent Oprah Book Club selection tells 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.

Kolker will appear in conversation with CNN Journalist Holly Firfer, in partnership with the JCCs of Cherry Hill, Dallas, Indianapolis, Miami, Rochester, and St. Louis.

This event is free, but registration is required. 

Order your copy of “Hidden Valley Road” at the link below.  A Cappella Books offers free local delivery to most in-town Atlanta neighborhoods for purchases of $20 more. All orders outside the store's delivery area will be promptly shipped or can be picked up curbside between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday-Saturday.

About the Book

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. 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. 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. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

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. 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. 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.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family’s unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

About the Author

Robert Kolker is the New York Times bestselling author of “Lost Girls,” named one of the New York Times‘s 100 Notable Books and one of Publishers Weekly‘s Top Ten Books of 2013. As a journalist, his work has appeared in New York magazine, Bloomberg Businessweek, The New York Times Magazine, Wired, GQ, O Magazine, and Men’s Journal. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the 2011 Harry Frank Guggenheim Award for Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.