Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,164

as they became.”

* * *

In the summer of 2017, at his laboratory in Denver, Robert Freedman took the unusual step of allowing an undergraduate to work as an intern—a young pre-med major from CU Boulder with a special interest in neuroscience. She wanted to be a researcher, like Freedman, focusing on schizophrenia, her family illness.

On a sunny day in June, Kate walked into Freedman’s lab for the first time and met the lab techs and assistants, all graduate students, some five years older than she was. When they learned that she was just eighteen, they took notice. This was a highly sought-after position. One of them made a crack about how her family must have been huge donors to get her in there.

Kate smirked. “Well, are you talking money,” she asked, “or tissue?”

Lindsay’s daughter walked past the room where her mother and aunt and several of her uncles had come to test their auditory gating, listening to those double-clicks with electrodes affixed to their heads, years before she was born. She moved alongside the counters where genetic material from her family and others had been analyzed for evidence of the CHRNA7 irregularity. She stood near where the data from choline trials on little children were studied for signs of schizophrenia—tests that could change everything for a future generation, thanks to six of her uncles.

Her grandfather’s brain was probably lying around there someplace. She wondered how long it would take before she could have a look at it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In early 2016, my great friend Jon Gluck first introduced me to Margaret Galvin Johnson and Lindsay Galvin Rauch. The sisters had been searching for a way to let the world know about their family. They knew that to do their story justice, every living Galvin family member would have to agree to participate—to speak frankly and unreservedly about what, until then, had been private and often very sensitive family issues—and the author would need the independence to follow the story in any direction. I’m extremely grateful that everyone agreed. My deepest thanks to Margaret and Wylie Johnson, Lindsay and Rick Rauch, Peter Galvin, Matthew Galvin, Mark Galvin, Richard and Renée Galvin, Michael Galvin, John and Nancy Galvin, and Donald Galvin—and, most poignantly, Mimi Galvin, who was so willing to open up about her life before her death in 2017. This book is a testament to the entire family’s generosity, candor, and faith that their story can be a help to others.

Lindsay and Margaret deserve special acknowledgment. As her mother’s executor and the legal authority for her mentally ill brothers, Lindsay worked tirelessly to locate medical records that no one knew still existed, filing reams of paperwork and connecting with a platoon of mental-health professionals and hospital administrators. Margaret, in turn, offered up decades of personal journals and diaries and biographical essays, supplying many priceless details about life on Hidden Valley Road. Both sisters have spent countless hours with me, in person and on the phone and over email, never once balking at the most picayune or intrusive questions or requests. My heartfelt thanks to them both.

I also owe a world of thanks to the psychiatrists and researchers who studied the family—Lynn DeLisi, Robert Freedman, and Stefan McDonough—each of whom spent many hours with me, explaining their research and, with the family’s blessing, connecting the dots between their work and the Galvins for the first time publicly. Several other experts in genetics, psychiatry, epidemiology, and the history of science helped me gain a broader understanding of the debates and theories of mental illness: Euan Ashley, Guoping Feng, Elliot Gershon, Steven Hyman, John McGrath, Benjamin Neale, Richard Noll, Edward Shorter, E. Fuller Torrey, and Daniel Weinberger. And I am eternally grateful to Kyla Dunn, whose expertise in genetics helped me ask the right questions in the beginning of this project and saved me from a number of embarrassing errors at the end. (Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.)

My thanks to many additional family members, many of whom are not quoted directly but whose perspectives contributed to the narrative: Eileen Galvin Blocker, Kevin Galvin, Levana Galvin, Melissa Galvin, Patrick Galvin, Betty Hewel, George Hewel, Ellie Johnson, Sally Johnson, Mary Kelley, Kathy Matisoff, Jack Rauch, and Kate Rauch. Thanks also to Nancy Gary (an honorary Galvin if ever