The Hour I First Believed

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is another wonderful book by Wally Lamb.  I absolutely loved "I Know This Much Is True" but for some reason, I held off reading this for a long time!  Finally, I picked it up and was immediately engrossed in it.


In a nutshell:


When high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, move to Littleton, Colorado, they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999, while Caelum is away, Maureen finds herself in the library at Columbine, cowering in a cabinet and expecting to be killed. Miraculously, she survives. But when Caelum and Maureen flee to an illusion of safety on the Quirk family's Connecticut farm, they discover that the effects of chaos are not easily put right.



While Maureen fights to regain her sanity, Caelum discovers five generations' worth of diaries, letters, and newspaper clippings in his family's house. As unimaginable secrets emerge, Caelum grapples with the past and struggles to fashion a future from the ashes of tragedy. His quest for meaning is at once mythic and contemporary, personal and quintessentially American.


Expect to fall in love with the characters, flawed as they are, and expect to cry when you close the book.


This one joins his other books on my keeper shelf!


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