The Hour I First Believed

By Wally Lamb



A good book will take the reader to another time and place. If you are comfortable with that time and place being inside a cabinet in Columbine High School's library on the day of the shootings, Wally Lamb's "The Hour I First Believed" is a truly stunning read. While it is a very heavy story (I cannot emphasize just how heavy it is), it is also a book about hope and putting one foot in front of the other. It is a story about trying again and again no matter what the outcome.

"The Hour I First Believed" is a longer book; it is not a weekend read. However, it is an excellent book, both in the story development and the more subtle subtexts. The only problems I can see some readers having with it is a) the "f" word is used throughout, and b) a one-sided liberal political agenda suddenly pops up approximately two-thirds of the way through. These two factors may turn some people off.

The book opens with the main character, Caelum Quirk, picking a pizza up on a Friday night at the local pizza place. There are two young men working the shift and Caelum knows them from the school he teaches at: Columbine High School. The reader knows, of course, the havoc Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris will wreak on their classmates and teachers the following week. This makes for an intense beginning, waiting for them to show their truly demonic selves to the world. Their rampage will take place the following Tuesday.

As it turns out, Caelum's beloved aunt has a stroke that weekend, so he is called to the east coast to tend to her in the hospital. He leaves his wife Maureen behind, as she is a school nurse at Columbine and can't really take the time off. While Caelum is in Connecticut, his aunt passes away. He is devastated by the loss and is going through the motions of arranging her funeral when he learns of the shooting at Columbine. His only thought is he needs to return to his wife, though he has been unable to reach her, thereby not knowing if she is even alive.

He arrives in Littleton and starts searching for her. Finally, he finds her at another school where all the survivors were evacuated to, and he takes her home. Instantly, he realizes she is a different person. The trauma she suffered while hiding in the cabinet in the library is brought to life by Wally Lamb's attention to details. As the reader, you truly feel like you were there in the library, scared beyond all belief.

"The Hour I First Believed" is an incredible account of what happened that day at Columbine. It is also a commendable tribute to those who perished, those who were victimized and those who had loved ones involved in any capacity. More than that, it is a book about moving beyond the horrors of life. It is about cultivating a new life and becoming your best person.

To move on, Caelum and Maureen move back to Connecticut, to the farmhouse left to him by his aunt. It has been handed down through several generations of Quirks, and Caelum is not thrilled at the prospect of spending his days there. No matter how he and Maureen try to move past the terrible ordeal Maureen has been through, they are still broken people, each moving through life in different ways. The sadness of the story does not end at Columbine. There are many sad days for them to struggle through, though the reader is always hoping for the best for Caelum and Maureen.

Wally Lamb's storytelling abilities are amazing. His writing style is so easy to follow; his characters are very easy to relate to; and in the end, the reader will feel as though they were the characters in the book and have survived the horrible ordeals only to finally be uplifted.