Hidden Valley Ranch: Inside the Mind of An American Family by Robert Kolker

Hidden Valley Ranch: Inside the Mind of An American Family by Robert Kolker

Read by Sean Pratt

13 hours, 8 minutes

Published April 2020 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

 

Publisher's Summary: 

Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado, where their twelve children perfectly spanned the baby boom: the oldest born in 1945, the youngest in 1965. In those years, there was an established script for a family like the Galvins--aspiration, hard work, upward mobility, domestic harmony--and they worked hard to play their parts. But behind the scenes was a different story: psychological breakdown, sudden shocking violence, hidden abuse. By the mid-1970s, six of the ten Galvin boys, one after another, were diagnosed as schizophrenic. How could all this happen to one family?

What took place inside the house on Hidden Valley Road was 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, from the era of institutionalization, lobotomy, and the schizophrenogenic mother to the search for genetic markers for the disease, always amid profound disagreements about the nature of the illness itself. And 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.

My Thoughts: 

In the early 1990's, the University of Nebraska football team had a player whose mental health ended his playing career and eventually ended up with him being shot and paralyzed by police. At the time, the word was that he had schizophrenia (that is not the diagnosis they later gave him). By that time, I had two small boys and I spent some portion of their late teens and early twenties worrying about schizophrenia because of what I'd learned all of those years earlier, terrified that one of them might begin exhibiting signs in his early twenties. Fortunately, neither did. 

Don and Mimi Galvin were not so fortunate. Because of mental illness, one of their sons killed himself and then his girlfriend, one of them sexually assaulted their two daughters, two of them died after decades of taking medication. 

When their eldest, Don Jr., the golden child began exhibiting troubling signs of mental illness in the 1960's, the Galvins worked hard to hide his illness from the outside world. Mimi, in particular, worked hard to get him the help he needed. But help was hard to find then, as it continued to be as one and then another of the boys' mental health declined, to find the help they needed. There was very little knowledge of schizophrenia - no known cause (nature vs. nurture being an ongoing battle amongst those who did research the illness) and no effective medical treatments that didn't leave the patient a shadow of themselves. As that young football player had done, the Galvin boys repeatedly stopped taking the medication, convinced that it was not helping or that its help came at too high a cost. Through it all, Mimi continued to fight for her sick boys, at the expense of her healthy children.

Alongside the story of the Galvins, Kolker also gives readers some background on the history of schizophrenia research and treatment, introducing readers to scientists and doctors who, in an effort to prove the biological and genealogical cause of the disease, worked tirelessly to find answers. '

Eventually the two paths crossed. Because of the high incidence of the disease in the Galvin family (as well as hundreds of other families who also had high percentages of family members with the disease), the researchers were able to reach a great number of conclusions as to the biological cause of the disease and to work toward finding a medical treatment. Here's where our medical system has failed all of those who came after the Galvins - there is not a lot of money to be made in developing and marketing medications to treat schizophrenics and so pharmaceutical companies don't. 

As I read, this book reminded me very much of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, although the Galvins were not unwilling participants. And unlike that book, this one doesn't end with an "at least groundbreaking research resulted and so many lives have been saved." Kolker ends with us understanding that, despite everything that researchers have learned, there's still a long way to go in finding out how to treat patients with schizophrenia. 

Tenth of December by George Saunders

Tenth of December by George Saunders

Read by George Saunders

5 hours, 40 minutes

Published January 2013 by Random House Publishing Group

Publisher's Summary: 

In the taut opener, “Victory Lap,” a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In “Home,” a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders’s signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.

Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.

Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov’s dictum that art should “prepare us for tenderness.”

My Thoughts: 

I feel like a broken record when I say this, but it seems to be a truism (for me, at least) when I tell you that in this collection of short stories some were stronger than others. 

Maybe it's because I listened to it. As much a fan of having authors read their own works as I am, here is was something of a problem for me. Professional readers or actors are able to alter their voices to make the characters from story to story unique. Mr. Saunders either isn't or chose not to do so. Because of that, it was difficult for me to adjust to new stories because it felt very much like I was still listening to the main character from the last story. 

Maybe it's just me, because "real" reviewers praise the heck out of this collection. Perhaps I just don't get it; perhaps, once again, it would have made more sense for me to read one story a day and not read straight through. Maybe it's just that my reading mood, my mood in general, was not in a place to take in all of the unrelenting harshness of the stories.

All of that being said, some of these stories really made an impact. In "Victory Lap," I was literally on the edge of my car seat, not going in to work, as the story finished up, terrified by what might happen to the children involved. "Escape from Spiderhead" made me really consider the choices we make and truly what our criminal justice system and science might be capable of doing. So many of the stories (all?) deal with human beings capacity for hope, but also for delusion. No story captures that better than "Al Roosten." The story that really touched me the most was "Tenth of December," where a dying man, set out to commit suicide to avoid a slow, even more humiliating end, wanders out into the cold woods to die. When he sees a young boy fall into a not quite frozen lake, though, he needs to find the strength and determination to save him. 

And here I am, in the end, questioning whether or not short stories are for me. Or are the really good stories worth searching for amongst the stories that don't work as well for me? 

Life: It Goes On - January 19

Happy Sunday! It's sunny here...at least for now...but only a whopping 3 degrees so we're hunkering down. Sitting here next to the windows on the north side of the house, it's considerably cooler than where I've been sitting, enjoying my morning coffee and watching CBS Sunday Morning. May have to grab a cardigan and some slippers if I'm going to sit here long enough to finish this and write up a couple of reviews. How many more days until summer? 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker. I don't have any audiobooks that have become available just now, and I'm way behind on podcasts, so I'll probably listen to some of those until a book becomes available. 

Watched: Football, college basketball, women's professional volleyball. Did I tell you that Omaha is home to two professional women's teams? Last week we watched one team and this week we watched the other. Pretty excited that ESPN feels like there's a decent enough audience that they will be showing at least some of the matches for that team. It also has Nebraska alum on it, included two that are Olympians. 

Read: Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson for book club this week. 

Made: What did we eat this week? I'd like to tell you but I honestly can't remember anything other than homemade mac and cheese. I cannot get myself in the mood to cook lately. 

Enjoyed: Wednesday was hair night and you know I always love that. Friday we had dinner with friends and I always enjoy that. But what I most enjoyed was texts and FaceTime calls I was getting from Miss H, who is on a trip to Phoenix this week. Life was really hard for her for a really long time and it makes this mama's heart so happy to see her loving life and having great adventures. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: This past week, as part of the Cozy Minimalist Community's House Hushing Challenge, I started "hushing" my house. In hushing you clear the surfaces in a room (at least) and live with it emptied for at least 24 hours then make the decision on what to bring back. Tuesday the next room will be announced and I'm eager to start that, after seeing this past week's results. 

Thinking About: Less than two months until Daylight Savings Time begins and I can't wait for sun in the evenings. I mean, it's dark in the morning here until about the time I'm half way to work everyday - I don't care if it's light then since I can't see outside during the day anyway. 

Feeling: Lighter. This week I "hushed" my kitchen. Which is to say that I took everything off of the counters and refrigerator and lived with it like that for 24 hours before deciding what needed to come back in. I found new homes for several things (my big mixer will now live in the basement since I only use it a few times a year and I am loving the the result. Now to work on the tops of the cupboards!

Looking forward to: Book club this week. 

Question of the week: January tends to be the time that people either decide to start living healthier or to declutter and reorganize (or both). Are you one of those people, if so, which do you do? I have given up on using January as the time to start a regime for lifestyle (the gym is too full, there's often too much decadent food left over from the holidays, it's too cold to walk outside). But you know I'm all about any kickstart I can get to declutter and organize! 

The Antidote by Karen Russell

The Antidote by Karen Russell

432 pages

Published March 2025 by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing—not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch,” whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples’ memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch’s apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town’s secrets and its fate.

Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting—enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been—and what still could be.

My Thoughts: 

The Antidote was a great book to finish off 2024. It defies classification: it is both historical fiction and fantasy. It is political commentary, sweeping saga, intimate personal stories. It is devastating and hopeful, tense but not without humor. It's set in one of the most notable times of this country's history but addresses concerns that span the centuries. And it's set in a fictional small town in Nebraska, but it's packed with real places, the real history of the state, and real photographs taken by those sent to record that time.

"Black Sunday began as a gash in the western sky, growing wider and wider and spilling down dirt instead of blood. Sometimes I imagine the glee of those journalists in the New York City papers - typing up the story of our worst day in their fancy language. Adjusting the margins and pushing our tragedy into a skinny column, just like old Marvin at the funeral home shoving a tall corpse into a tight suit."

"Imagine every ghost rising up to hurl their cemetery earth at the living. That was the sound we heard last Sunday afternoon. At 3:00 p.m the sun was murdered in cold blood, in full view of every woman and child. The sun sank into black cloud. Buried alive, at a shocking altitude, but the duster to end all dusters."

We get the story primarily from The Prairie Witch, Asphodel Oletsky, Harp Oletsky, and Cleo Allfrey whose names will change as chapter headings as the books progresses. But we also get chapters from the points of view of a cat and a scarecrow, chapters that are The Antidote's history, and one of Harp's "deposits." In less skilled hands, all of this shifting could be confusing; but Russell skillfully blends all of these points of view at the same time she is moving the story forward while giving us the backstory of the land and the people. The characters are fully realized, their travails their own but their concerns and hopes universal. While the full story is slow to develop, it's never drags and it's well worth the time spent when everything comes to a conclusion with a second cataclysmic (and real) event. 

"The Republican River became a four-mile-wide whitewater monster, thrashing its long tail from eastern Colorado to Oxford, Nebraska. Twenty-four inches of rain fell in twenty-four house! Bridges split and splintered apart. Hundreds of miles of road got washed out. The river poured forward with enough force to carry cars and rooftops. Walls floated away. Friends became cadavers in outfits we recognized, floating beside tractors and drowned cattle. Bodies were seen riding on the crest through the middle of towns, their shy faces staring underwater even as we screamed their names."

At a time when I was really struggling to focus on any book, this one grabbed me and kept me reading. The concepts, the history, the characters, the writing, the pacing, the creativity all worked to make this book that will stay with me a long time. As much as it is set in the past, it is filled with lessons to be learned, not the least of which are to see how history is repeating itself and how human nature remains unchanged. Russell leaves us with hope - we see that there is an opportunity to learn from the past and to change our future. If only we will listen. 

One final note, if you read this book, make sure you read the Land Lost Acknowledgment and the Author's Note at the end.