Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

1972, Colorado Springs, Colorado

One day in 1972, a seven-year-old Mary led her oldest brother Donald (then 27, and wearing a bedsheet draped to resemble monk’s robes) to the top of a hill near their home in Colorado Springs. She had told Donald to bring a rope with them, and after reaching the top of the hill, Mary began tying Donald to a tree; inspired by movies she’d seen, Mary wanted to burn her brother at the stake. Donald, believing his little sister to be the Virgin Mary, submitted passively to her instructions, but Mary never went through with her plan, instead leaving Donald praying on the hilltop.

Mary (now known as Lindsay) recounts this story in 2017 on her way to visit Donald in an assisted living facility in Colorado Springs. She continues to grapple with the ways schizophrenia has impacted her life and the lives of her other brothers and sisters, who grew up at a time when understanding of the disease was in its infancy and the pressure to conform to the image of an all-American family was intense. During the decades that researchers interested in the origins of schizophrenia were studying the Galvin family for clues, the children were trying to make their own way: “reconstitute[] the fragments of their parents’ dream, and shap[e] it into something new” (xxi).