THE HOUR I FIRST BELIEVED - Wally Lamb

There's a lot in this book: I guess that's why it took 700-odd pages to tell it all, and why the author took 9 years to write it. It's a captivating story ( I wanted to say "marvellous" but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to using that word) starting with the killings at Columbine, where the narrator, Caelum, is a teacher whose wife, Maureen, hides in a cabinet in the infamous library while many of the killings took place.  Maureen then suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, ends up becoming addicted to prescribed tranquillizers, runs over a promising young athlete while driving her car in a haze of drugs, and goes to jail for five years.  Her husband Caelum then becomes the centre of attention in the story as he seeks his true roots back on his family's farm, where they have moved. Connected to his story is the story of his prison-reform ancestors, and the prison where Maureen is jailed, which is on the family farm property. 

So we have the past, the present and the future, everything is connected, cause and effect plays a large role. Hurricane Katrina, the building of the Statue of Liberty, September 11, college students studying mythology and how that shows in their lives, a soldier back from Iraq, the Miss Rheingold contest, Mark Twain- it's all there.

Lamb is obviously trying to portray how we are all connected,too, as humans, and that we have a responsibility towards one another.  Fortunately, the one subject he almost successfully avoids completely is religion, but he  does acknowledge a " higher power".  The hour he first believed is when he finds hope for the future with the coming birth of his "daughter's" baby, at the same time as he finds reconciliation with the past.

Well-done, on the whole.  At one point, I nearly gave up, because he hadn't really set the reader up for the addition of new characters, and after 300 pages, I suddenly felt I was adrift, trying to make the connection, but at the same time wondering if I cared enough to do that. I'm glad I stuck with it, though.