Morning Coffee Book Club

Join the Morning Coffee Book Club where Scott Biegen, a PSPL Librarian (and English Teacher in a previous life), leads a monthly book discussion.

The group meets the 3rd Wednesday of the month from 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. in the Cornelia White Community Room at the Welwood Murray Memorial Library in downtown Palm Springs. Coffee and muffins are graciously provided by Aspen Mills.

To receive meeting information and join the email list for the Morning Coffee Book Club, please email Scott Biegen in advance of the meeting at scott.biegen@palmspringsca.gov

View other selections for the Morning Coffee Book Club.

March 15, 2023

Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

—#1 New York Times Bestseller

 —The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.

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.

With clarity and compassion, bestselling and award-winning author Robert Kolker uncovers one family's unforgettable legacy of suffering, love, and hope.

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