The Hour I First Believed

By: Wally Lamb

Narrated by: George Guidall

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.

Wally does it again!

Ever since I read “I know this much is true” I’ve been hooked on Wally Lamb. He does not disappoint!

a keeper

I will listen to this book many times, life lessons at every chapter. while following and moving along many characters. terrific narration also.

A kick in the gut, much like life.

I think everyone under the age of 30 should read this account of lives change forever bye the Columbine massacre.

Not My Favorite Lamb Book, But Still Quite Good

Wally Lamb is an excellent writer. The first half of the book had me interested and anticipating every minute. Caelum and Maureen Quirk are intriguing and real and Lamb did an excellent job of character building. The way he developed how the tragedy of Columbine affected every part of their lives from how dysfunctional his wife became to how understanding and patient he became, which was not his nature. You feel the emotion this couple have had to deal with and how that day changed everything forever.

After the shootings, they fled from Colorado to Connecticut to live in Caelum's family farm and to bury Caelum's aunt whom he loved. There they would attempt to rebuild some sort of a normal life again, however more tragedy ensues and their lives take another tragic turn.

This is where I find the book gets into a hodgepodge of stories. As Caelum is sorting through his aunt's effects, he comes across old diaries, clippings and documents, which reveal all sorts of family history and secrets that help Caelum, come to terms with who he is. It is through the reading of many of these historic papers that I found my mind wandering. I was able to concentrate on the important parts, but they were buried in a mountain of unnecessary information that could have easily been edited out without doing any harm to this novel.

As for the narrator, George Guidall, I thought he was excellent. He has that "tired" and raspy tone to his voice. Perfect for someone like Caelum. He really added personality to the main character.

Although this book is definitely worth listening to, I can't say I'm not just a little disappointed. If I could, I would have rated it 3 1/2 stars.

Clever knitting together of fact and fiction

There were several things I really liked about this book, and top amongst them was the clever way that the lives of these fictional characters were interwoven with the actual happenings and events, I felt it was done very skillfully. I also felt that there was a very intesting exploration in the story of the concept of "victims". Who are the 'victims' of a tragedy, and how the 'victims' of such an event can 'ripple out' way beyond those directly involved. The story also makes one consider how people can simultaneously be both victims and perpatrators. It also made me consider that however much we feel we are in charge of our own destiny sometimes, 'chance', 'fate' and plain bad luck, can knock you off course in small or major ways. This was a very intersting story, and I had a lot of sympathy for the characters. That said I felt it could have been edited to produce a somewhat tighter narrative, and some of the 'historical' passages were a little over detailed to know real point. Not this authors best book in my opionion, if you want to read Lamb at his best go for an unabridged version of 'I know this much is true'. That said this was still an excellent story and well worth a listen.