(www.boston.com, Nov. 3, Jan Gardner)

Ten years after his last book, Wally Lamb is back. I’m coming to him late but I found his new novel, “The Hour I First Believed,” out on Nov. 11, engrossing and heart-wrenching. I won’t say too much but it all begins with the Columbine shootings (Lamb quotes from the killers’ writings) and then it moves back and forth across a hundred-plus years, drawing on Dorothea Dix’s work as well as the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. Yes, it sprawls, but the center holds.

Lamb launches his national book tour next week at UConn-Storrs, where he has been both a student and a professor, then comes up to Brookline on Friday, Nov. 14.