Book of the Day: "Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family," by Robert Kolker

Today's BotD tells the morbidly compelling story of the one family who provided most modern insight into how schizophrenia works.

Welcome to The Book of the Day, a new feature for our premium subscribers in which we spotlight some of our favorite reading material - the mainstays of our personal libraries! We want to note that, while we wish God of the Desert Books could take credit for many of these favorites, they're in no way affiliated with us, and we're not earning anything by promoting them. Books of the Day are just honest-to-goodness recommendations: writing we like a lot and think you'll like, too.

Reading a certain kind of great book can be like gawking at a car crash: though you're aware that what you're seeing is someone else's nightmare, you're simply powerless to look away. That's how I felt reading "Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family," Robert Kolker's sleep-stealing, alarm clock-defying portrait of the Don and Mimi Galvin family of Colorado: I genuinely could not look away.

In fact, I bought this book on my first vacation with our Editor-in-Chief, David, which we spent in Louisville, KY, mostly prowling around the many excellent bookstores. As thrilled as we were to finally be on vacation together, the titles were piling up, and on Day Three or so, I remember telling him I needed a couple hours of downtime to read - and it was this title that had gotten under my skin! I sprawled out on my stomach, stretched across the hotel bed, reading like he wasn't even there. (Of course, he understood, being, himself, a Book Person.)