New Canaan Library is pleased to present a virtual talk by Robert Kolker, award winning journalist and the author of the 2013 NYTimes bestseller, Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery. Kolker will speak about his latest release, Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of An American Family, on Tuesday, May 12 at 7:00 p.m. As part of the presentation, Kolker will be joined by Silver Hill Hospital’s Chief Clinical Officer Michael Groat, PhD, for a discussion of the many questions surrounding schizophrenia.
Please register online and find directions to join the talk by clicking on the event on the Library’s Events Calendar: newcanaanlibrary.org/calendar.

“A feat of empathy and narrative journalism.” Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times. Impeccably researched and compellingly written, Hidden Valley Road offers insight into the mysterious and often misunderstood disease of schizophrenia and the devastating effects on not only the patient, but the entire family. Hidden Valley Road tells the story of Mimi and Doug Galvin, who were raising their 12 children in post WWII Colorado, striving for the American Dream. By the 1970s that dream was shattered, with the revelation that six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic.

The events that took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road were 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, amid disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. 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.

Robert Kolker is The New York Times bestselling author of Lost Girls, named one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books and one of Publisher’s 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, Oprah, and Men’s Journal. He is a National Magazine Award finalist and a recipient of the Harry Frank Guggenheim 2011 Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.