The Quiet Room is the story of Lori Schiller, a young Jewish woman who suffers from schizophrenia and her attempts to cope with the disease. The story is unusual not only because it is genuine but because Schiller reveals, in great detail, the state of her psychology throughout the course of her illness from its inception at age seventeen to finally bringing it under manageable control when she turned thirty, in 1989.

Lori was raised in a normal, upper middle class Jewish family. Her parents, Marvin and Nancy Schiller, and her two brothers, Steven and Mark Schiller are frequent contributors to the book, offering their own perspectives on Lori's disease, her suffering and the impact her disease had on her family as a whole.

Lori was did not always suffer from schizophrenia; instead, it manifested while she was at summer camp. All of a sudden, she heard The Voices, manifestations of her illness that constantly blasted commands into her ears, telling her to do any number of horrible things, attacking her verbally and encouraging her to kill herself. In some visions, they even told her to kill herself and occasionally got her to try.

Lori was able to hide the Voices for awhile, enough to graduate high school and get through most of college at Tufts. Towards the end of school, Lori was able to graduate but she gradually withdrew and after college, she started to downward spiral until she tried to commit suicide and was placed in a hospital.

From there, Lori spent the next eight to nine years in and out of hospitals and halfway houses. Sometimes the Voices would subside and she would stay on her medication, leading her to make some modest recovery, but then the Voices would rage again, and she would act out in an outrageous way, landing herself back in the hospital, horrifying her parents, scaring her family and exhausting hospital staff. For awhile, Lori was addicted to cocaine and had a boyfriend who helped her get drugs named Raymond, but after her rehospitalization she was alone.

Eventually, Lori was placed in a long-term treatment facility which began to help her get on her feet. She finally began to accept that the Voices didn't need to be in control of her life and started to trust her counselors. Next she was given a—then experimental—drug named clozapine, which significantly helped her to cope.

Around 1989, Lori started to recover and finally left the hospital for good, at least as a patient. She lost weight, organized a new life routine, reconnected with friends and family, got a job and even started to date again, as described in an epilogue Lori wrote in 1994.

The Quiet Room is a brisk read, with five parts containing twenty-seven short chapters on the whole, along with an introduction and an epilogue.