Review 126: Hidden Valley Road

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book held interest for me in that there is some mental illness in my family. I’ve always understood that genetics played the biggest part of this, with some aspects of nurture, or environment. With this book, there is two aspects, one being a family of twelve children, where half develop mental illness, schizophrenia. The other aspect of the book is the history of how the medical field has approached this illness, with treatments and research in combating the illness.

The weaving of these two facets together into the story was well done, a good strategy. Overall the book is linear, but not entirely. We’d go through some years, then backtrack, then go forward, and backtrack again. For example, several times a drug for treatment was named, Thorazine, then in a later chapter we find out how this drug was developed. This overall jumping around of the timeline, particularly in the first parts of the book made it somewhat confusing at times. If it could have remained strictly linear I believe the book would have flowed better.

The book is highly readable; the language doesn’t dip into medical jargon or language that is incomprehensible. It is hard not to feel empathy for this family, with not only dealing with way too many children, but to have so many become mentally ill. And the experiences the younger children went through became that much more traumatic as less parental time would be devoted to them. There were so many different problems, issues, traumas for the younger children growing up, that in itself may cause mental illness.

Perhaps one of the most promising outcomes, particularly in research is in how treatment has improved in recent years. There is a focus on prevention and early intervention in ways that was not possible when this family was growing. One research in particular is promising is the discovery of choline during pregnancy may likely have an effect on a developing fetus; where lack of choline makes for a higher incidence of developing schizophrenia. A long term study is underway, with results likely to be in the forthcoming years. The best cure is one that stops the illness before it starts.


Thanks to DoubleDay Books and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.