October 1st Luncheon: Robert Kolker

About the Book:

The Vanishing Family by Robert Kolker: 9780385551038 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road comes the heart-wrenching journey of a family facing an unthinkable destiny, whose flawed genetic code might hold the long-sought key to a cure for dementia.

In the idyllic American town of Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, there 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home to see their beautiful, still-young mother fall under a gothic spell, changing into someone she didn’t recognize: withdrawn, neglectful, uncaring. Thus begins The Vanishing Family, journalist Robert Kolker’s superb follow-up to Hidden Valley Road (“Deeply compassionate and chilling,” wrote The Washington Post). This family, we learn, has a genetic mutation that causes dementia, but with an especially 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. Their former personalities seem to vanish—and there is a fifty-fifty chance that it will happen to their children, too.

About the Author:

Robert Kolker is the author of Hidden Valley Road, an instant #1 New York Times best-seller and selection of Oprah's Book Club that was named a Top Ten Book of the Year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Slate; one of the year’s best by NPR, the Boston Globe, the New York Post, and Amazon;  the #1 book of the year by People; and one of President Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2020. His previous work includes Lost Girls, also a New York Times best-seller and New York Times Notable Book, and one of Slate’s best nonfiction books of the quarter century. He is a National Magazine Award finalist whose journalism has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired, O, the Oprah Magazine, the Marshall Project, Bloomberg Businessweek, and New York magazine.

(Robert Kolker.com)

About the Luncheon

• Doors Open: 11:30 a.m.

• Location: Temple Israel

• Books: Registrants will pick up their books at the luncheon.

• Guests: Non-members are welcome to attend up to one luncheons per season. Members may bring with them an unlimited number of non-member guests, as long as the guests, individually, abide by the above Non-member Guest policy.

• Registration: Pre-registration is required. 

• Payment: Pre-payment is required.

• Cancellation Policy: Refunds will not be allowed for cancellations received after registration closes, and no-shows.