Valley of Forgetting

Alzheimer's Families and the Search for a Cure

De: Jennie Erin Smith

Narrado por: Carolina Hoyos

The riveting account of a community from the remote mountains of Colombia whose rare and fatal genetic mutation is unlocking the secrets of Alzheimer’s disease

“Powerful. . . . a poignant depiction of a community in crisis.”—Publishers Weekly

In the 1980s, a neurologist named Francisco Lopera traveled on horseback into the mountains seeking families with symptoms of dementia. For centuries, residents of certain villages near Medellín had suffered memory loss as they reached middle age, going on to die in their fifties. Lopera discovered that a unique genetic mutation was causing their rare hereditary form of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Over the next forty years of working with the “paisa mutation” kindred, he went on to build a world-class research program in a region beset by violence and poverty.

In Valley of Forgetting, Jennie Erin Smith brings listeners into the clinic, the laboratories, and the Medellín trial center where Lopera’s patients receive an experimental drug to see if Alzheimer’s can be averted. She chronicles the lives of people who care for sick parents, spouses, and siblings, all while struggling to keep their own dreams afloat. These Colombian families have donated hundreds of their loved ones’ brains to science and subjected themselves to invasive testing to help uncover how Alzheimer’s develops and whether it can be stopped. Findings from this unprecedented effort could hold the key to understanding and treating the disease, though it is unclear what, if anything, the families will receive in return.

Smith’s immersive storytelling brings this complex drama to life, inviting listeners on a scientific journey that is as deeply moving as it is engrossing.

©2025 Jennie Erin Smith (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“A multigenerational saga that is a compelling story in itself. . . . [Smith] has spent years inside the homes of both the patients and the researchers, and in exam rooms and other intimate spaces that give the author a stunning level of vivid firsthand detail.”—BookPage (starred review)

“Jennie Erin Smith writes with such narrative skill, such empathy and curiosity, such a strong sense of the place where science and people meet, that you come out with the feeling of having witnessed an extraordinary investigation into the mysteries of what makes us human.”—Juan Gabriel Vásquez, author of The Sound of Things Falling

“Valley of Forgetting is the masterfully told story of how, over the past four decades, a human drama of extraordinary significance has quietly unfolded in a rural province of Colombia. Jennie Erin Smith deserves a wide readership for this book that is at once revealing, unsettling, timely, and ultimately, deeply moving.”—Jon Lee Anderson, author of Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life and To Lose a War