The Vanishing Family: A Story of Fate, Love, and the Disappearing Mind

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road comes the heart-wrenching journey of a family facing a tragic genetic destiny, set against the scientific search for hope for all of us who fear losing our selves to dementia

In the idyllic American town of Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, lived a family with nine siblings, the youngest a girl named Barb. As the older children headed off to college and started their lives, only Barb was home to see their beautiful, still-young mother fall under a gothic spell, changed into someone they don’t withdrawn, neglectful, uncaring.

Thus begins The Vanishing Family, journalist Robert Kolker’s stunning follow-up to Hidden Valley Road (“Deeply compassionate and chilling”, Washington Post). The family, we learn, has a gene mutation for dementia, but with a special cruel twist. As early as their forties, formerly loving parents and hard driving executives will lose their jobs, have affairs, take up drinking—shed all inhibitions and sense of responsibility, and become people their families hardly know. And there is a 50/50 chance that it will happen to their children, too.

Kolker follows the family over years as they realize that what happened to their mother is happening to first one, then two, three, four, and more begin to change. The Vanishing Family unfolds like a heartbreaking thriller, as the siblings struggle to cope with terrifying fates. Sue, the black sheep of the family, finds a calling in caring for the others. And Barb sets out to find a cure. She learns that their mutation for a rare form of FTD (frontotemporal dementia) might help scientists understand and cure all dementia, including the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease.

Moving, intimate, hopeful, redemptive— The Vanishing Family is a medical detective story about an unforgettable family that speaks to all of us who wonder how our own stories will end. View Less