The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb

The Hour I First Believed is Wally Lamb's third novel, released after a 10-year hiatus from fiction. In 752 pages, Lamb uses a variety of voices and characters who deal with generations of family history and the school shooting in Columbine to face issues of faith, psychology and what it takes to survive everyday life.

When high school teacher Caelum Quirk and his wife, Maureen, a school nurse, 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 at a cost: she is unable to recover from the trauma. 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, and further tragedy ensues.