Robin Hobb's Reviews > Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

This was a difficult book to read. I took it in slow pieces. Sometimes I set it down for days, not hours, as I let the course of the events settle into my mind. Often I asked myself, as a parent, what would U have done?

As you venture in, discard the idea that schizophrenia is 'split personality.' Move away from "The Three Faces of Eve.' This is not a voyeuristic tale of mental illness.

It is, and is not, a book about schizophrenia. It is, and is not, a book about a family struck by misfortune.

Twelve children, ten boys followed by two girls were the offspring. Not all the children became mentally ill, but all suffered the consequences, including the parents.

If you have mental health issues in your extended family, this book is terrifying as it chips away at nurture versus nature to reveal that there are genetic factors that may predispose a child to mental illness. There are physical factors, such as insufficient choline in the diet of a pregnant woman that may cause the development of her unborn child to skew toward mental illness.

One bit that fascinated me was the idea that just as 'fever' was once regarded as a disease and is now more of a symptom, schizophrenia is possibly one of a number of disorders that can appear on a spectrum including autism, bipolar and epilepsy.

There is a frank look at how the medications prescribed to quiet the symptoms of mental illness may lead to severe physical consequences, and even death. That's a devastating thought if you stop to wonder how many people suffered a 'cure' that was possibly worse than the disease.

There are heroic people in this book. I was most impressed and humbled by the courage of the Galvin family, not only in contributing tissue and blood samples to scientific research but by laying bare the story of how the illness affected the family and the bonds of family. The tenacity of researcher Lynn DeLisi is remarkable as she pursued her belief that researching families would lead to knowledge about mental illness.

The accounts of the family's life are told in chapters that focus on one or another of the children or parents as the years unfold. Interspersed are chapters about the research scientists that tirelessly pursued an understanding of the brain disorder.

This isn't an easy read but I found it to be very rewarding and enlightening.

As a writer, it put my thoughts onto new paths as I reconsidered how mental illness is depicted in our genre. Consider Star Trek, TNG or Batman or Superman. How are villains who are obviously deranged dealt with? As a writer, how do I deal with characters who are mentally disturbed? As a reader or viewer, do I accept the solutions that popular fiction suggest?

It's all grist for the peculiar mill that is the mind of this writer.