When six of her 12 children went mad, Mimi Galvin did her best to make to light of it

Don Galvin and Mimi Blayney married in December 1944. It was a shotgun wedding. They had been high school sweethearts. Just before Don was about to be shipped out to join the fighting in the South Pacific, Mimi called from New York to say she was pregnant. A rushed wedding across the Mexican border in Tijuana followed: a not uncommon wartime story. But Mimi’s pregnancy turned out to be the first of a dozen, each accompanied by severe morning sickness. Between 1945 and 1965, a procession of children arrived, ten boys and then, at last, even after Mimi’s gynaecologist had warned that further pregnancies might prove life-threatening, came two girls.

Don had remained in the Navy after the war, but his career stalled. Perhaps, Robert Kolker suggests, his dalliance with an admiral’s wife may have had something to do with that. It would not be the handsome Don’s last affair, though his philandering remained hidden from his children for many years. Leaving his failing Navy career in 1950, Don joined the Air Force, which had just been established as a separate branch of the armed services. His ever-increasing family would spend most of their childhood in Colorado Springs, at the new Air Force Academy, where Don became a public relations flack and instructor, before moving to a career in the non-profit sector, overseeing federal grants to several western states.

Hidden Valley Road centres around a meticulous reconstruction of the lives of the Galvin parents and children. The family history Kolker provides is remarkable for its depth and for the sympathetic portrayal of a large cast of characters, each of whom is sketched with great skill. To accomplish this feat, the author spent years interviewing family members, their relatives, friends and acquaintances. He pored over family documents and photographs, and read voluminous case records of the many individuals’ encounters with the medical profession.