Hidden Valley Road

We are more than just our genes. We are, in some way, a product of the people who surround us—the people we're forced to grow up with, and the people we choose to be with later.

I took a whole seminar on schizophrenia in college and still think about it often, as an example of how profound and insidious mental illness is, and how little we truly know about it. Kolker quotes a scientist in this book who states that schizophrenia is arguably the most devastating disease in the world. I'm inclined to agree with that assessment. This book illustrates the unbelievable terror and trauma of family in which six out of twelve children develop schizophrenia, one by one. It is beautifully and sensitively handled and I know I will think about it as often as I do that seminar.