Club Book Episode 117 Robert Kolker

Robert Kolker is an established and esteemed investegative reporter. Long known in journalism circles for his exposés in New York Magazine and Bloomgberg News, Kolker became one of the nation’s most read nonfiction writers (almost overnight) after the April 2020 publication of Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family. Now a #1 New York Times bestseller, Hidden Valley Road centers around the 12-child Galvin family in post-WWII Colorado. Considered a paragon of domestic prosperity and bliss by friends and neighbors, the Galvins harbored dark secrets. Hereditary schizophrenia – diagnosed in six family members – eventually came to light as the culprit, but only after the Galvins’ story had confounded medical science for years. Oprah Winfrey recently selected Hidden Valley Road for her reimagined Oprah’s Book Club, bringing Kolker to a still wider audience. In 2020, Netflix released the feature film Lost Girls – based on Kolker’s 2013 book of the same name – which tracks the murder spree and clues trail of an as-yet-unidentified serial killer.

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