Hidden Valley Road: inside the mind of an American family by Robert Kolker
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American Dream. The Air Force brings the Galvin family to Colorado and they find a beautiful home large enough for their 12 children. Every Sunday the whole family dressed up for church and looked picture perfect. But, inside their house on Hidden Valley Road things were definitely not perfect. Starting with Donald, the oldest, six of the twelve children were diagnosed with schizophrenia one after the other, while the other six lived in constant fear that they might be next. The Galvins tried to keep their children's mental illness a secret, but as the number of mentally ill children increased that became harder to do. Eventually everyone avoided the family and the strange antics of the mentally ill became almost commonplace in their neighborhood. Even as their family fell apart, the Galvin parents still seemed to cling to secrets - many were only uncovered after their deaths. In Hidden Valley Road Robert Kolker explores the phenomenon of the Galvin family's mental illness and also the history and treatment of schizophrenia, which sadly hasn't improved as much as treatments for other illnesses has over time. Kolker does an amazing job of telling this family's terrible story with compassion, while also highlighting the plight and mystery of mental illness even today.
When I first heard about this book I couldn't imagine growing up in a family like this. I thought I would feel sorrier for the parents, but really they were pretty terrible parents long before any of their kids showed signs of mental illness. They had no control over their children, yet they just kept having more. There was so much physical fighting between the boys that it was like something from Lord of the Flies and the parents were just like, "whatever, boys will be boys." Then I never expected there to be so much sexual abuse. The two youngest children, both girls, were molested by not one, but two of their brothers. There are questions about whether some of the younger brothers were molested as well, but with their schizophrenia it's hard to tell what is a true experience and what is a delusion. Then at least some of the older boys were also molested by a trusted priest who helped Mimi convert to Catholicism. I felt the worst for the "normal"/non-mentally ill children. In a family of 12 the odds are low that you're going to get a lot of one-on-one attention from your parents, but when 6 of the 12 children are seriously mentally ill and in and out of hospitals you don't stand a chance as a "healthy" child. It's sad to see that the siblings don't have great relationships today. Many of the "healthy" children escaped and have little to do with their mentally ill siblings. Only Lindsay/Mary the youngest really tries to help her mentally ill siblings and encourages her other healthy siblings to do the same. But, I can only imagine the kinds of deep wounds you would have growing up in a family like this. Mental illness is sad and terrifying, but for a family like this it almost seems like some kind of genetic punishment for everyone - sick and healthy alike.
Some quotes I liked:
"For a family, schizophrenia is, primarily, a felt experience, as if the foundation of the family is permanently tilted in the direction of the sick family member. Even if just one child has schizophrenia, everything about the internal logic of that family changes. But the Galvin never were an ordinary family. In the years when Donald was the first, most conspicuous case, five other Galvin brothers were quietly breaking down." (p. xviii)
"The great break between Freud and Jung took place largely over the issue of the nature of madness itself. Early psychoanalysis's greatest partnership was over. But the argument over the origins and nature of schizophrenia was only just beginning." (p. 19)
"Practically every drug prescribed for psychosis, from Donald's time until now, has been a variation on Thorazine or clozapine. Thorazine and its successors became knowns as 'typical' neuroleptic drugs, while clozapine and its heirs were 'atypical,' the Pepsi to Thorazine's Coke. Like Thorazine, clozapine could be dangerous: Concerns over drastically low blood pressure and seizures were serious enough to take it off the market for more than a decade. Even so, drugs became the common treatment of schizophrenia, and the psychiatric profession's great schism only widened. On one side of the street, doctors at the large state hospitals said schizophrenia required drugs, while the therapists in more rarefied settings still recommended psychotherapy. Like most families, the Galvin were at the mercy of what was a mental health care system in name only, forced to choose from options they weren't equipped to assess." (p. 87-88)
"In the calculus of their preteen minds, blocking out the nighttime encounters with Jim and his violence toward his wife was the price Margaret and Mary had to pay to gain a few days of liberty from the house on Hidden Valley Road. It was more than that. Being with Kathy and Jimmy gave the a sense of belonging they couldn't get at home, not when so much attention was being paid elsewhere. They both so dreaded Donald that in the contest between Donald and Jim, Jim won. That, if nothing else, explained why they both kept coming back." (p. 101)
[After Brian's murder/suicide] "But what only Mimi and Don knew, and told no one for many years, was that sometime before his death, Brian had been prescribed Navane, an antipsychotic. There is no known record of the diagnosis that called for that prescription - mania, or depressive psychosis, or trauma-induced psychosis, or a psychotic break triggered by the habitual use of psychedelic drugs. The other children never learned when their parents first knew about this. But both Don and Mimi must have understood that one of the conditions Navane treats is schizophrenia. The thought of another insane son - their amazing Brian, of all people - was so devastating to them, they kept his prescription secret for decades." (p. 129-30)
"Matt's first admission to Pueblo [state mental hospital] was on December 7, 1978. Five days later, Peter joined him there, for his third visit to Pueblo that year. Donald was also cycling in and out of Pueblo that year - three Galvin brothers on separate wards of the same hospital, for what would not be the last time. From then on, when Mary was alone with Matt and Peter, she locked herself in her parents' room until someone else came home." (p. 169-70)
[When Lindsay/Mary tells her mother about Jim's molestation] "Mimi was talking about her own experience, skipping right past the details of what Lindsay was saying about Jim. Lindsay needed Mimi to take her side, to tell her that what Jim had done to her was wrong. But Mimi did not do that. She had never picked the side of a healthy child against a sick one, and she wasn't going to start now. Instead, Mimi started talking about how Jim was mentally ill. Lindsay flushed. To her, schizophrenia wasn't an excuse for what Jim had done to her. Certainly no mainstream researcher or psychiatrist would say that it was Jim's psychotic delusions that made him a pedophile. But Mimi was not willing to separate the two issues. Lindsay, though she expected as much, was still deeply hurt. What made it so hard for her mother to sympathize with anyone other than her boys? It was as if she had used up all of her compassion on the sick children, even Jim, leaving nothing for anyone else. But that day, Lindsay was ready. She told her mother she would never agree to be in the same room as her brother [Jim] again." (p. 199-200)
[After Mimi's death Lindsay uncovers that her father was receiving ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) for years before his death and no one knew] "Mimi had to have known about Don's ECT sessions. She'd gone there with him, and no doubt driven him home afterward, as often as once a month for years on end. She'd kept this secret, too. To be a member of the Galvin family is to never stop tripping on land mines of family history, buried in odd places, stashed away out of shame." (p. 313)
"There is no way of knowing how life might have been different fro the Galvin brothers if the culture of mental illness had been less rigid, less inclined to cut people off from mainstream society, more proactive about intervening when warning signs first appeared. But there is, perhaps, reason to hope that for people like the Galvin born fifty years from now, things could be different, even transformed." (p. 323)
The Lies That Bind by Emily Giffin
I've always loved Emily Giffin's books and have seen her speak at book events a few times as well. Her last book, All We Ever Wanted was so timely with the #metoo movement, but this one was TERRIBLE.
The main character Cecily is 28 and just broke up with her long-time boyfriend because he didn't want to get married. It's May 2001. She's doubting her life in New York City, her career, and her decision to break up with her boyfriend. At a bar she meets Grant who she has an instant connection with. They start a whirlwind romance, but Grant has a LOT of baggage - both of his parents are dead and his twin brother has ALS (which is also what his mother died from). He is leaving for the summer to take his brother for an experimental treatment in the UK. He arrives home on September 10, 2001 briefly sees Cecily then goes to work. But the next day is 9/11 and Grant works in one of the World Trade Center towers. In the aftermath of 9/11 Cecily realizes that she is not the only one looking for Grant - he is married and his wife has put up missing posters.
Here is where the book REALLY gets bad. Up to this point it was pretty ridiculous, but now it gets stupid ridiculous. Cecily meets up with Grant's wife several times under the pretense of interviewing her for the newspaper she works for. Then she and Grant's wife Amy, actually start becoming friends - that is some sociopath behavior right there. Cecily gets back with her boyfriend who immediately proposes. Then she finds out she's pregnant - she slept with Grant on 9/10 and Matthew a few days later so who's baby is it?! *Cue the Jerry Springer music* Then, Amy wants to help plan her wedding with Matthew and turns out she and Matthew know each other their families go way back - Matthew was even at Amy and Grant's wedding! WTF! Then, Cecily tries to have some closure about Grant by reaching out to his ill brother - only turns out Grant faked his death in 9/11 because he was also in trouble with the Feds for insider trading - that's how he paid for his brother's experimental treatment. So, his brother committed suicide, Grant faked his death and has been hiding out in their family cabin in the Adirondacks. Are we in a Lifetime TV movie yet? After this encounter Cecily confesses everything to Matthew who promptly wants to "postpone" the wedding until he knows whether the baby is his or not. She also confesses to Amy who already knew about her and Grant but is also a sociopath and didn't care?! Cecily moves back home to Wisconsin and prepares to be a single mother. Just before the delivery Grant shows up to tell her he's going to turn himself in and face the music. He goes to federal prison for a year and Cecily has the baby - who is of course Grant's. Once Grant is out of prison he moves to Wisconsin as well and guess what?! They all live happily ever after! Wow. This is honestly one of the worst storylines I've read. I only kept reading because I've always liked Emily Giffin so much and I did want to see if Grant and Cecily ended up together in the end.
Some reviews crucified Giffin for using 9/11 as a plot point, but I think Giffin was living in New York City during 9/11 so I give her a little bit of a pass for that. But, the whole Grant faking his death in 9/11 is a pretty terrible way to use 9/11 in the book plot. The whole plot line was really just terrible and way too outlandish to be even semi-believable. I am pretty disappointed in this book. If I had read the reviews I would have seen this coming, but I didn't bother because I've read all her books so of course I'm going to read the new one. I'm just glad I got it from the library and didn't buy it!
Beyond Labels: a doctor and a farmer conquer food confusion one bite at a time by Sina McCullough, PhD and Joel Salatin, Farmer
There is so much conflicting information out there about what we should eat. Thousands of new diet books are published every year claiming they have "the solution" whether it's paleo, keto, whole30, Atkins, etc. With so much information out there how do you decide what to eat? That's where this unique book comes in - a collaboration between Polyface farmer and master of the unorthodox Joel Salatin and Dr. Sina McCullough, a Ph.D. in Nutrition who reversed her autoimmune disorder through diet. Written like a conversation between Joel and Sina, the book covers how to chart your own food path and the steps to take in order to get to optimum health. The first section covers creating your personalized roadmap to health. There are questions to help you create goals for both health and eating and a quiz designed to help you see where you currently are with food and where you'd like to be. The second section is the largest and gives 34 tips on how to shift from low to high quality processed food. The third section gives tips for shifting from high quality processed food to whole foods. The fourth section gives tips on shifting from whole foods to locally grown whole foods. The fifth section gives tips on going from locally grown food to growing your own food. At the end of the book in the Appendix Joel and Sina both give a brief biography and share how they met and decided to collaborate on this book.
I'm a HUGE Joel Salatin fan, so I'm always excited when he has a new book. This one is very different, but still very challenging and inspiring. I really like that they go from making better choices with processed food all the way to growing your own food. Having drastically changed my own diet about 10 years ago it is a process and I'm still not perfect or where I want to be. I really appreciate that they both understand that eating better is a process and they have so many great tips to help people improve with manageable steps. I also really liked the first section and want to go back and think more about what goals I want to work toward and things I could do better. This is honestly a book for ANYONE who wants to improve their eating, but might feel overwhelmed with all the choices/plans/ideas out there.
Some quotes I liked:
[on preservatives in food] "I saw one of the greatest demonstrations of this in California at a school farm...one of the first assignments for the students was to bring some food to class. Students brought Twizzlers, Oreo cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows and squeezable cheese. The teachers brought an orange, apple, lettuce and a green bean. The students put all their contributions in the worm box on one end and the teachers put theirs in the other end. The next week the students ran to the box, opened the lid, and found all their contributions sitting there untouched. The teachers' contributions, on the other hand, were completely gone. Digested. As the students puzzled over the phenomenon, the teachers made their point: 'why would you want to eat something worms won't even eat?' Wow! The point is, what drives life is death and decomposition. If it won't rot, it won't decay. If it won't rot, it won't digest." (p. 107-8)
"Back in 1985, Monsanto was manufacturing rBGH [recombinant bovine growth hormone]. They conducted experiments on cows across the United States by injecting them with rBGH - the first genetically engineered hormone in our food supply. Nobody knew what would happen. Yet, beginning in 1985, the FDA allowed Monsanto to sell the experimental milk (and meat) for human consumption with no restrictions while the rBGH drug was still in the experimental phase of development. Even worse, the FDA did not require those experimental products to be labeled. That means, for 8 years, she of us drank experimental milk and ate experimental meat without knowing it. And when the GAO [Government Accountability Office] called them out, the FDA stood behind their decision...'The FDA does not require the labeling of food products derived from animals involved in drug treatment trials...we [the GAO] believe the public should have the right to know which food products have been produced from animals being tested with investigational drugs. Consequently, we disagree with the FDA on this point.'" (p. 148)
[Things that came to light during litigation against Monsanto over Roundup cancer claims] "Monsanto wrote research papers in secret and then passed them off as written by scientists in academia. A Monsanto executive told other company officials that costs could be kept down by writing research papers themselves and then hiring academics to put their names on the papers....The U.S. Department of Heath and Human Services planned to conduct a scientific review of the safety of glyphosate. But senior EPA officials killed the review...Even though Monsanto adamantly claims that Roundup is safe for us to eat and does not cause cancer, Monsanto's lead toxicologist stated in her deposition that she 'cannot say that Roundup does not cause cancer' because 'we [Monsanto] have not done the carcinogenicity [cancer] studies with Roundup.'" (p. 167)
"How much glyphosate gets used, anyway? On soybeans alone, 120 million pounds. On corn alone, 95 million pounds. All other uses amount to about 60 million pounds. Add all those up and you have 275 million pounds...every year that's how much Roundup herbicide is dumped onto the U.S. That doesn't count use in any other country." (p. 168)
"I've decided the most prominent benchmark designating folks who 'get it' with food is leftovers...By definition, leftovers means that you did not eat single service portions. How much food today is sold in single service packaging?" (p. 191)
"When Teresa and I go to potlucks, she always brings at least two and often three dishes - more than anyone else. The reason is so I'll have something to eat. She puts it on the table with all the other dishes, but I make sure I know which ones are hers. Then when I go through the line I concentrate on her stuff." (p. 194) I do the SAME - especially with holiday meals.
"One of the most intriguing things to me, in this domestic culinary space, is that at the very time in history when we've never enjoyed so many labor-saving techno-gadgets, we've never been more reluctant to prepare our own food. As food prepared outside the home escalates north of 50 percent these days, our techno-glitzy kitchens sit idle, and that's a shame. Never in history has cooking been more efficient. Never before has from-scratch cooking been easier. And yet here we are buying highly processed foods and going out to eat routinely." (p. 263)
House Lessons: renovating a life by Erica Bauermeister
When Erica Bauermeister's family comes back to Seattle after living in Italy for two years she finds she wants to recreate the slower-paced closeness their family had in Italy. On a whim she starts looking at houses or property in Port Townsend, a small coastal town about 2 hours away from Seattle. When Erica sees the old abandoned looking house that's not even for sale yet, she knows this is THE HOUSE. After almost two years of wrangling with estate attorneys and inspectors the house is theirs and they volunteered to clean out all the contents - which turn out to be something out of Hoarders. During the years they spend renovating the house Erica starts to see how the house is doing more for their family than she originally intended. Each family member grows and changes based on the work they do and Erica starts to see things she needs to work on in both her parenting and marriage. Renovating this house helped her see the parts of herself that needed renovating as well. The only thing that was disappointing to me was that just when the house is finished they decide to rent it out. Wait, WHAT?! I can't imagine doing all that work to your "dream house" and then renting it out. They do eventually move into it full time several years later, but I thought that was really odd. At the beginning of the book you're not sure where the house renovation falls into Erica's writing career, then you find out that the house also sparked her first successful novel, The School of Essential Ingredients. Overall, it was an interesting book and a unique look at home renovations and how they can spark personal renovations as well.
Some quotes I liked:
"When I was a real estate agent, I used to ask my clients how they cooked. They usually thought I was trying to find out what kind of kitchen they wanted - and that was true, in part. But the question was really a way to find out how they approached life. Those who had little interest in cooking generally has even less in home maintenance and remodeling. Chefs who loved the planning of a meal - from researching recipes to finding the right ingredients - often had the temperament to design their own homes, and they could envision stunning remodels. But a fixer-upper requires a different kind of creativity, the kind that you often find in a cook whose mind is awakened by opening a refrigerator to an odd assortment of ingredients, knowing that dinner must come out of it. A cook sees leftovers as a chance to make something new and beautiful, and when someone with this kind of personality sees an old house, they are likely to want to save it." (p. 10)
"We'd left Italy, a place which celebrated motherhood, and had moved back to a country where stay-at-home mothers were disregarded at best. The reentry was hard for me. Cooking gave me an identity in the way Ben's job gave him his. I didn't want to share. And yet when we invited people over for dinner, I would always end up incredibly frustrated. Ben would be out in the main part of the house, telling jokes and making sure everyone was having a good time. I was in the kitchen, where I wanted to be - unless, of course, it was where I was expected to be. By the time the food was ready, I was no fun to be around. Once a year, generally in January when the weeks were long and wet and dark, Ben and I would have our annual argument, and the topic was always the same - I wanted a more equal division of labor in our household. It got to the point where the fight even had its own name: Party Boy and Kitchen Girl." (p. 151-52)
"So many of us declare that we will not become our parents. But they are the house we are born into. Their lives, their rules, their loves are the walls that surround us, make us. No matter what, we will always be renovations, never a clean slate. The trick, as with any renovation, is keeping the good bones." (p. 160-61)
