TWO FOR ONE: Robert Kolker AND Chloe Benjamin

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Chloe Benjamin (0:11)

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Robert Kolker (0:15)

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Chloe Benjamin (0:17)

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Charlie Gibson (0:36)

Well, hello there, all of you fans of The Book Case. We're back, a new version, two weeks in a row. Good for us. Good for us.

Kate Gibson (0:44)

Well done. Original content, two weeks in a row.

Charlie Gibson (0:47)

We're still apologizing for the fact that we had to pause there for a week. And here we go.

Kate Gibson (0:52)

Well, we're excited about the two weeks of original content. Maybe if you're lucky, you'll get three weeks of original content. And this week is really exciting because we have sort of a two-for-one. We're doing two books in one show, starting with The Vanishing Family by Robert Kolker, which I'm a huge fan of Robert Kolker. If you guys haven't read Hidden Valley Road, which came out a few years ago, it's an amazing book of family history that puts together some medical mysteries. This book has some similarities, different disease, talking about dementia. And it's a great, great, great book. I don't know if I introduced myself, by the way. I'm Kate, if anybody cares.

Charlie Gibson (1:27)

And I'm Charlie Gibson, and I don't.

Kate Gibson (1:29)

Fair enough.

Charlie Gibson (1:30)

Book number one is The Vanishing Family by Robert Kolker. Katie and I really found this compelling. And it features a family dealing with a disease that they could not comprehend and could not get diagnosed. But it turns out to sap the life of many family members the same way Alzheimer's does. But in this family's case, the symptoms begin at a much earlier age. And if those family members who are afflicted have children, then there's a 50-50 chance their children are going to get it. So it's a really compelling story of this family. And book number two?

Kate Gibson (2:05)

Book number two is Understory by Chloe Benjamin, which was this month's last month's pick. I'm sorry, we're a little late on this one, but it was last month's pick for Good Morning America's Book Club. And because of the sort of family snafu we had going on, I interviewed her by myself. And it's a fascinating book where she has to write time both forwards and backwards. We'll get to that one in a minute.

Charlie Gibson (2:28)

Actually, Katie had to do the interview by herself, and she called me up and said it was much better, Dad, because you weren't there.

Kate Gibson (2:33)

I did. I actually think I actually paired that with a nyan-yan and nyan-yan.

Charlie Gibson (2:37)

No, she didn't. Unfortunately, Chloe Benjamin said it was a much better interview.

Kate Gibson (2:43)

Yeah, she did.

Charlie Gibson (2:44)

She did.

Kate Gibson (2:44)

She said, thank God. Thank God the other guy's not here, because this went smooth as silk.

Charlie Gibson (2:48)

But we're going to start with Bob Kolker and The Vanishing Family. This is a family of two parents and nine kids. And Bob gave us the family background.

Robert Kolker, good to have you with us in The Book Case. The book is The Vanishing Family. And it's a really, really interesting family. And the book is so sad. Tell me about the family. Give me the outlines of what they are.

Robert Kolker (3:14)

They're really a very ordinary family. They're bigger than most families. There are nine children.

They grew up in a middle-class part of Pennsylvania. The dad was a professional. The mom was a homemaker. Most of the kids grew up in the 70s. There was one, the ninth child was a late-in-life baby who grew up in the 80s.

But something changes, and at the beginning, it feels like the same sort of changes that happen in a lot of families. There's the end of a marriage, and there's what appears to be a nervous breakdown of the mother who stops going out and stops making food, and starts drinking, and really disengages with the world. And people think that it's alcoholism, perhaps depression, or even menopause. They don't stop to think that it could be anything other than that. And by the time the problem gets serious enough to engage with it, she dies early of breast cancer. It's like a bomb went off in the family, and everyone moves on. And then a few years later, one of those nine children starts to develop symptoms that are eerily similar to her mother. And again, depression maybe, schizophrenia, melancholia, maybe it's just the way that people in that family respond to stressful situations, but she is disengaged with the world. She's sort of disengaged from her own children even. She used to be work for a Fortune 500 company as an executive, and now she's watching Baywatch all day long. And no one can get a handle on it until yet another sibling starts to show symptoms. That's a full 16 years after the mother dies, a second sibling, Mary, starts to develop the same symptoms. And that's when the family sits up straight and says, wait a minute, not only is this genetic and inherited, but we all might have it, and we still don't know what it is. It takes forever to be diagnosed. It is a brain disease, a form of dementia called frontotemporal dementia that is rarer than Alzheimer's. But in the grand scheme of things, what I've learned is that Alzheimer's is really only about 60% of all dementia is out there. There are lots of rare dementias like FTD that are out there.