The Hour I First Believed

While this was well written and a page turner, it was depressing. I come to expect that with Wally Lamb novels, but I think this was the most heart wrenching. The book is part non fiction, part fiction. The real part is Columbine, and Lamb definitely did his research on what happened before, during and after the attacks. The story part is the aftermath of the attacks on a particular couple that worked at Columbine. The narrator, Caelum (a school teacher), talks about how much his wife (the school nurse) changes after witnessing the attacks in the library of the school (where most of the children were killed), and from then on, the tragedies keep on coming.
I actually didn’t want to read this, because I knew it would be a hard read but I bought it in error, thinking this was a different Wally Lamb book (I was distracted because I was with my niece at the time). I’m glad I got through it, but I wouldn’t recommend this to everyone, especially people who are going to read a book solely on escapism. I actually teared up at the end, because I felt like I’d been through what these two characters went through. And it just never gets better. But everything does happen for a reason in this book whether you believe it for spiritual reasons or not (hence the title). Like I said, it’s well written, well researched, and there is a lot more to it then just the Columbine “attacks” (which take place within the first 100 pages of a 600 page book). And that’s a relief, because that’s hard to relive again even though it happened over a decade ago. But unlike his two other novels I felt more taken aback by what happened between these pages. I don’t know if I really liked the characters or if I even really got to know them without their struggles, anxieties, and bad luck. Worth reading if you like Wally Lamb.