The Hour I First Believed

The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story gripped me right from the beginning. A beautifully rich story of broken people taken through horrors and self discovery. Meticulously detailed and rich in dialogue, it was easy to get lost in the story. The characters were rich with imperfections, completely human, unfailingly flawed.

Part of what gave this story such a genuine feel of truth was that it unfolded not over the course of weeks or months but we follow the characters through years of trying to recover, and discover themselves. Far from being a slow story, this is a rich journey through life.

Summary:
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.

As Caelum grapples with unexpected and confounding revelations from the past, he also struggles to fashion a future out of the ashes of tragedy. His personal quest for meaning and faith becomes a mythic journey that is at the same time quintessentially contemporary -- and American.
The Hour I First Believed is a profound and heart-rending work of fiction. Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller, assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

Recommended Reading:
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Lost and Found by Jacqueline Sheehan
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer