In Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania, there lived a family with nine siblings, the youngest a girl named Barb. As the older children headed off to college, only Barb was home to see their mother fall under a gothic spell, changing into someone she didn’t recognize. We learn that this family has a genetic mutation that causes dementia, but with an especially cruel twist. As early as their 40s, formerly loving parents and hard-driving executives will lose their jobs, have affairs, take up drinking, and become people their families hardly know. Their former personalities seem to vanish --- and there is a 50-50 chance that it will happen to their children, too. THE VANISHING FAMILY unfolds like a heartbreaking thriller as the siblings begin to realize that what happened to their mother is happening to them.