Too Good to Miss Out (Spoiler Alert)

I loved this book.  But you may not think so.  The book is The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb.  I give my books away but not this one.  I have to reread it.  Why?  Because I'm impatient.  The book was too long and if the story wasn't on my favorite character, I skimmed ahead. 

The main protagonist was Maureen, married to Caelum.  But none of the story would have happened were it not for Maureen.  I got hooked on Maureen.  I wanted to know what happened to her.  I fell asleep with the book in my hands because I couldn't put the story away.  Unfortunately, nothing else interested me.  Her husband, the other main character was just in the way of my reading.  Much of the book was on Caelum's genealogy and history.  To tell you the truth, I couldn't tell who was whom, when it came to his grandmother, aunt, lady friends and Cailum's biological mother.  I didn't care; I didn't want to read about them.  So I skimmed until I came back to Maureen.

Much of the last third of the book was on another book.  It was the history of Caelum's farm and his female relatives.  I can't be more descriptive than that because I didn't read it.  Every time the font changed to indicate that old book, I skipped over it.  It was a distraction to my seeing what had happened to Maureen.

Maureen was the school nurse at the Columbine tragedy.  She was hiding in a cabinet in the room where the killing took place.  She was traumatized and life was never the same.  Maureen was too affected to work.  She actually was in physical pain, besides emotional.  Never mind work, she could barely get through a day.  She and Caelum moved back east, to his family's old homestead.  She went through hell trying to cope.  Finally, with the help of some good drugs, she could work.  But she was addicted.  Being a nurse, it was fairly easy for her to get her pills.  On her way home, she accidentally hit a teenager.  She tested positive for drugs.  The result was a prison sentence.  Maureen's life in prison was another story.  (Please Mr. Lamb, write another book on Maureen's life in prison.) 

At the end of the book, the prison was having a "family and friends" event and Maureen, right in front of Caelum and friends had some sort of cerebral hemorrhage and died.  (There's the spoiler.  Sorry.)

Ugh.  So that's the end of Maureen.  Now I know.  Now I also know that I missed out on a lot of Caelum's story.  After all, The Hour I First Believed, is about Calum's faith journey.  And that's why I am now rereading the book.