The Hour I First Believed

New York Times Bestseller

"The beauty of The Hour I First Believed, a soaring novel as amazingly graceful as the classic hymn that provides the title, is that Lamb never loses sight of the spark of human resilience. . . . Lamb’s wonderful novel offers us the promise and power of hope.”―Miami Herald

The profound and compelling story of a personal quest for meaning and faith, this gripping work of psychological fiction comes from Wally Lamb, #1 New York Times bestselling author of She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True

When 47-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, in a story set against the backdrop of a national tragedy, Caelum returns home to 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 as two vengeful students go on a murderous rampage. Miraculously she survives, but at a cost: she is unable to recover from the debilitating trauma and PTSD. In a marriage suddenly in crisis, Caelum and Maureen flee Colorado for an illusion of safety at the Quirk family farm back east. But the effects of chaos are not so easily put right, and further tragedy ensues.

In The Hour I First Believed, Wally Lamb travels well beyond his earlier work to deliver a powerful family saga. He embodies in his fiction myth, psychology, family history stretching back many generations, and the questions of faith that lie at the heart of everyday life. The result is an extraordinary tour de force, a moving story of grief and loss that is at once a meditation on the human condition and an unflinching yet compassionate evocation of character.

Wally Lamb is the author of five New York Times bestselling novels: She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed, Wishin’ and Hopin’, and We Are Water. His first two works of fiction, She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, were both #1 New York Times bestsellers and selections of Oprah’s Book Club. Lamb edited Couldn’t Keep It to Myself, I’ll Fly Away, and You Don’t Know Me, three volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for two decades. He lives in Connecticut.