Book Review - The Hour I First Believed

Over the long holiday weekend I did one of my favorite things ever – I got lost in a really good book. One so good that I couldn't put it down. It was so good that I read the almost 800 pages in two days.

I had already read Wally Lamb's two previous novels, She's Come Undone and I Know This Much is True and they both struck a chord with me. He's very funny, but in  a biting sort of way. His characters are introspective which appeals to me. His books are filled with people who are trying to understand their pasts and are doing it in a way that grapples with the present.

His new book is called The Hour I First Believed.

"When forty-seven-year-old high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife, Maureen, a school nurse, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, Caelum returns home to Three Rivers, Connecticut, to be with his aunt who has just had a stroke. But Maureen finds herself in the school library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed, as two vengeful students go on a carefully premeditated, murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado and return to an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm in Three Rivers. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers a cache of old diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in an upstairs bedroom of his family's house. The colorful and intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk family ancestors, from the Civil War era to Caelum's own troubled childhood. Piece by piece, Caelum reconstructs the lives of the women and men whose legacy he bears. Unimaginable secrets emerge; long-buried fear, anger, guilt, and grief rise to the surface." *

Anybody who has ever been faced with tragedy and has tried to find a way to make it make sense will find at least part of their own story and their own questions in this book. 

* Book summary courtesy of the book publisher Harper Collins website.