Was this the most disturbed family in America? 

BIOGRAPHY

HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD   

by Robert Kolker (Quercus £20, 400 pp)

Don and Mimi Galvin appeared to have the perfect all-American family: ten handsome boys followed by two pretty girls, all born in a textbook baby boomer arc between 1945 and 1965.

The Catholic couple’s large, modern house, on Hidden Valley Road, was close to the Colorado Air Force Academy where Don worked as an instructor. Mimi came from a wealthy and well-respected Texan family. She was the ideal housewife, baking a cake and a pie every night. The children were talented musicians, sportsmen and chess-players.

But something darker was lurking beneath the surface: six boys would be diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Robert Kolker explores the link between the Galvin family (pictured) and the history of schizophrenia in a fascinating new tome

First, it was the eldest, Donald, a strapping medical student. Alarm bells started to ring when, during his first year at college, he threw himself on to a bonfire.

Next it was the maverick second son, Jim, who became abusive to his wife and sisters, Mary and Margaret.

Brian soon followed, committing an unspeakable act which would haunt the family for ever. The youngest son, 14-year-old Peter, started to wet himself because ‘the Devil was under the house’.

As their brothers toppled like dominoes, the remaining siblings wondered: ‘When will it be me?’

Two hockey-playing brothers, Matt and Joe, were the last to fall. Matt believed he was Paul McCartney and Joe heard voices.

In the post-war era, one prominent theory suggested schizophrenia was caused by over-controlling mothers. So it’s not surprising that Mimi was unwilling to admit her sons were sick.

Sure, her family was a little eccentric and boisterous, she’d say, but what do you expect with ten boys?

It wasn’t until the violence escalated that Mimi was forced to admit that something was wrong.

First, Donald tried to kill both himself and his wife, Jean, with cyanide. Jean freed herself from his clutches and called the police. Brian’s girlfriend, Noni, wasn’t so lucky. Two bodies were found in their apartment. Brian had shot her in the face before firing a bullet into his own skull.

The Galvin family (pictured) have had their DNA used in a number of studies, after six of the sons were diagnosed with schizophrenia

The Galvin family (pictured) have had their DNA used in a number of studies, after six of the sons were diagnosed with schizophrenia

The violence was sexual, too. Margaret, Mary and Peter were all molested by several of their older brothers. Once, 13-year-old Mary was even raped by Jim.

As in his previous book, Lost Girls, about the murder of five prostitutes on Long Island, Robert Kolker is forensic in his research, interviewing all the surviving members of the Galvin family, including Mimi, who died in 2017 following a series of strokes.

Don died of cancer in 2003 before Kolker embarked on the project.

Kolker expertly weaves the Galvins’ story with the history of schizophrenia. And what a horrible history it is. In the 1930s, for example, and in some cases even later, treatment included injections of animal blood, lobotomy and even sterilisation.

The family’s genetic material has been the subject of numerous studies. They are the perfect sample. According to one psychiatrist, they are potentially ‘the most mentally ill family in America’.

By studying the Galvins’ DNA and comparing it with that of the general population, scientists are making steps towards understanding how to treat, predict and even prevent schizophrenia.

It is a slippery illness, however: difficult to diagnose, even harder to treat, and with little consensus about what causes it, or even exactly what it is.

HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD by Robert Kolker (Quercus £20, 400 pp)

HIDDEN VALLEY ROAD by Robert Kolker (Quercus £20, 400 pp)

Even today, its treatment is a far cry from a perfect science. The drugs given to the Galvin boys were not so much a cure as a numbing — little more than a ‘warehousing of people’s souls’.

Sometimes the medication proved as deadly as the illness itself. Both Matt and Jim died prematurely of heart failure, a side-effect of the neuroleptic drugs. A cruel catch-22: many patients can’t live without these pills, but the medication can also kill them.

What caused this harrowing disorder? Was it due to the boys’ environment, their drug-taking, their perfectionist mother, their absent father, their violent sibling rivalry? Or was it something innate, something biological?

This nature versus nurture debate continues to divide scientists today.

What’s clear is that genes play a part: those with a family history are four times more likely to pass it on.

Mimi was convinced it came from Don’s side of the family, as during the 1950s he had suffered from what she called ‘an attack on the nerves’, taking sick leave and recovering in hospital.

This book is as much a story about the children who escaped schizophrenia’s cruel clutches as it is about those who fell victim to it.

When she was seven, Mary became so frustrated by 27-year-old Donald’s insistence that she was in fact the Virgin Mary that she tied him to a tree and half-heartedly planned to set him on fire.

Mary and Margaret were used to running into their parents’ bedroom, locking the door and waiting for the sound of the police sirens as they came to take one of their brothers away.

Both girls were eventually sent to boarding school, where Mary changed her name to Lindsay in an attempt to distance herself from her family’s ugly past.

Despite this, Lindsay, now aged 54, continues to look after her brothers, even Donald, now 74, whom she once fantasised about burning alive. She is all too aware that it could have been her.

Mimi, too, never gave up on her sons, caring for them right up until her death. Yes, this is a book about schizophrenia, but at its heart it’s a fascinating exploration of family, what it means and how far people will go to protect it.