The Hour I First Believed

Wally Lamb explores the consequences of war and violence on human lives blown irrevocably off course.

When 47-year-old teacher Caelum Quirk and his younger wife Maureen‚ a nurse‚ move to Littleton‚ Colorado‚ they both get jobs at Columbine High School. In April 1999‚ Maureen finds herself in the school library‚ 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.

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 intriguing story they recount spans five generations of Quirk ancestors‚ from the time of the Civil War 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.

The Hour I First Believed is a profound and compelling work of fiction. And Wally Lamb proves himself a virtuoso storyteller‚ assembling a variety of voices and an ensemble of characters rich enough to evoke all of humanity.

'extraordinary ... disturbing yet achingly tender‚ a complex story related with such clarity and intimacy that the reader is captured by the narrator's dilemma right from the start. Caelum Quirk in his vulnerability‚ his confusion‚ his sympathy and above all his quiet decency‚ expresses so much about what it means to be a man trying to cope with the ripple effects of private and public trauma.' -- Debra Adelaide‚ author of The Household Guide to Dying.