Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

This is a difficult book to read as a psychiatrist for the last 35 years. So much went wrong and really, there aren't enough details to figure out exactly what could have turned the corner for a better outcome. It is a Gothic tale of the Galvin family — Mimi, Don, and their 12 children. On the surface, they were a postwar American dream. Don was a World War II veteran helping to jump-start the just-opened Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs alongside his witty and selfless, but quite controlling wife. The first 10 Galvin kids, born beginning in 1945, were handsome boys who became high school football and hockey stars in their growing boom town. Two beautiful daughters, Lindsay and Margaret, followed them. They lived on the outskirts of the city, on Hidden Valley Road, and were the envy of other families throughout Colorado Springs. Throughout the book I wondered what it would have been like to be their neighbors. Inside the house — where Mimi tried to bake a pie or a cake every day, by her own account, but the kids didn't argue it was incorrect — life was a nightmare. Six of the Galvin boys would descend into psychosis, and either be diagnosed with schizophrenia and/or bipolar disorder, and one more was hospitalized in a psychiatric institution on several occasions and was quite low functioning compared to his other well siblings. The Galvin boys fought often and roughly— cracking each other’s skulls and throttling their mother — while the parents hid it all from the outside world. In addition to head injuries, there were sexual assaults on multiple siblings and over a long period of time, and another brother killed himself and his wife in a murder-suicide. It was a huge mess and it did not go at all well.