Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family

Mary

Although “practical, shrewd, and, perhaps by necessity […] independent” from a young age (148-149), Mary was devastated by Margaret’s departure; life at home with Donald and Peter was increasingly difficult, and Matt, who had served as a protector for Mary, had also left home in 1976. Mary spent as much time as possible with her father, whom she now saw as her only ally.

Mimi refused to listen whenever Don urged her to institutionalize one or both of the brothers. Instead, Mimi devoted herself to finding a cure; at one point, she took all the remaining children to the East Coast to consult with a pharmacologist who put them on a complicated vitamin regimen. This had little effect on Donald, who persisted in his itinerant preaching and attempts to visit Jean in between hospitalizations in 1975 and 1976.

Amidst all this turmoil, Mimi increasingly relied on Jim and Nancy to take care of Mary, leaving her vulnerable to Jim’s predations. Mary kept the abuse quiet, but she grew more and more uneasy as she got older, worried that Jim would eventually try to have sex with her.

Margaret

After moving in with the Garys in Denver, Margaret struggled to adjust to the family’s luxurious lifestyle: a house with a stable and swimming pool, weekends at their second home in Montana, vacations to their condo in Florida, and attendance at an elite private school. Though relieved to have escaped Jim, Margaret also resented that he remained part of the Galvin family while she lived elsewhere, dependent on the Garys’ charity.

Nevertheless, after an initial period of rebelliousness, Margaret settled into her new life, although she never told anyone the truth about why she was living with the Garys. Meanwhile, the gap between Margaret and her family widened, as Margaret became increasingly embarrassed by both their relative poverty and by her brothers’ behavior; on one visit home, she watched a fight between her brothers Joe and Matt culminate in a head injury that landed Matt in the hospital.

Matt recovered, and in 1976 began studying art at Loretto Heights in Denver. One day, he stopped by the Garys’ household for a visit, only for something to trigger a psychotic break. By the time Margaret reached him, he had taken off all his clothes and broken the vase he’d brought with him to show her.

Michael

Still struggling to cope with Brian’s death, Michael moved in first with an uncle in New York, and then with Mimi’s mother in New Jersey. The latter had heard about a commune—“the Farm”—recently established in Tennessee by a Marine-turned-guru named Stephen Gaskin. She suggested that Michael spend some time on the commune, and Michael agreed, joining in 1974.

Life on the Farm was both unorthodox and demanding: “Gaskin controlled what drugs people took, who slept with whom, and how money worked in the community (whose members relinquished cash, cars, property, even inheritances to the cause)” (164-165). Nevertheless, Michael found much about his time there rewarding, from the emphasis on meditation and mindfulness to the collaborative approach to personal growth. Specifically, he found the Rock Tumbler tent productive, where he and other “oppositional” men talked with each other about their issues.  

Michael eventually left the Farm and traveled to Hawaii, where he spent a year working odd jobs. Although he hadn’t planned on returning to Colorado, he changed his mind after a phone call from his mother, hopeful that his stint on the commune would allow him to interact with his family in a new way. Back in Colorado Springs, he enrolled in community college, but he found himself frustrated when his attempts to communicate Gaskin’s teachings failed to break through Donald and Peter’s symptoms.

Mary

Although her visits were never as frequent as she would have liked, Mary was able to spend some weekends and the last few weeks of each summer with the Garys; the family also paid for her to attend summer camp every year.

Back on Hidden Valley Road, the situation was worse than ever: Matt had joined Peter and Donald, having dropped out of college following his psychotic break. From 1978 onward, all three brothers were in and out of Pueblo, though Peter in particular often resisted treatment. Peter’s behavior got him kicked out of a supported living facility, as well as, on more than one occasion, his parents’ home. Nevertheless, the medical team treating him at Pueblo found that he could be charming and talkative at times and began to wonder whether he actually had bipolar disorder rather than schizophrenia. Given Peter’s track record of not complying with treatment, his doctors were wary of prescribing him the lithium normally used to treat bipolar patients, since it is dangerous if overdosed. They continued to treat him for schizophrenia, an illness that he may not have had.

With the sons who hadn’t become sick pursuing their own lives elsewhere, and Jim still abusing her regularly, Mary grew increasingly angry about her circumstances. Seeing this, Mimi made a concerted effort to spend time one-on-one with her now adolescent daughter, and Mary’s attitude towards her mother began to soften.

Jim and Lindsay

Determined to escape Hidden Valley Road, Mary applied to several boarding schools, ultimately choosing to attend Hotchkiss in Connecticut; she would enter in the fall of 1979.

That spring, however, Mary was raped by Jim; she had tried for the first time to fight him off, but her resistance only emboldened him. He never assaulted her again, but this traumatic incident was followed in rapid succession by another, when Mary got drunk at a party and was raped by two high school boys.

When Mary at last arrived at Hotchkiss, she was informed that there was already a student named Mary Galvin attending the school and instructed to choose a different name to go by. Mary settled on “Lindsay,” hoping it would signal a break with her former life.