The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia

Robert Kolker, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road, returns with another true story about a family and a disease nobody understood until it was already inside their house. In a quiet Pennsylvania town, a family of nine siblings watched their mother change — withdrawn, unrecognizable, slowly gone — long before anyone had a name for what was happening to her.

A family, a mystery, a possible answer

That name turned out to be a rare, inherited form of frontotemporal dementia — and as the siblings grew older, they began to recognize the same changes in each other. The Vanishing Family follows two sisters down two different paths: one becomes the family's caretaker, the other turns her grief into a search for a cure, intersecting with the broader scientific race against dementia and Alzheimer's along the way.

Why it stands out

Kolker again pairs intimate family reporting with clear, readable science writing — a strong next read for anyone who connected with Hidden Valley Road, or who wants a medical story with real stakes attached to real people.