Wally Lamb’s ​“Hour”

A crowd at the Anchor Bar heard a sneak preview of Wally Lamb’s new novel — and the prayer that gave it life.

The Oprah-christened best-selling novelist showed up at the storied College Street bar Tuesday evening for a rare reading. The place was jammed.

Lamb headlined the final spring gathering of the ​“Ordinary Evening” reading series at the Anchor. The series, one of those unofficial civic ventures that make New Haven such a vibrant place, resumes in the fall.

The Ordinary crowd generally meets in the Anchor’s downstairs Mermaid Room. Given Lamb’s fame, the gathering moved upstairs to the dining room and bar. Every booth was filled. So were the chairs hauled up from the basement, covering pretty much every available spot on the floor.

Organizers enlisted two writers to read aloud Tuesday evening. Poet Jason Shinder had the opening slot. Schinder passed away last month, though. His voice survived, as the event’s organizers read his poetry aloud.

Next up was Lamb, a Connecticut native born with a double dose of empathy, the way some others are born with a double dose of brains. His previous novels are She’s Come Undone and This Much I Know. He’s also known for teaching writing to women inmates at Niantic’s York Correctional Institution (and fighting off confiscatory guards and attorneys general on their behalf).

This fall Lamb’s third novel will be released, The Hour I First Believed. He told the crowd Tuesday night that his publisher informed him he may not do any public readings from the book until its release.

What a shame (for HarperCollins) — Lamb had already committed to the Anchor reading. He followed through on the commitment, reading two passages from the novel as well reading from the afterword.

For a sampling, click on the play arrow to the video at the top of the story. (Apologies for the poor lighting.)

Said A Little Prayer

The story’s setting includes Columbine High School and a Connecticut’s women’s prison. In the afterword read aloud Tuesday, Lamb spoke of a year-long ​“creative drought” that rendered him unable to get the novel started. The turning point came during a visit to New Orleans. He would ​“walk the streets alone” seeking inspiration. In a twist fitting for a novel named after a line from the gospel standard Amazing Grace, Lamb wandered into a church in the French Quarter and found the spark there.

“Outside there was revelry. Jugglers, street musicians, dancing, drinking,” Lamb wrote, and (Tuesday night) read. ​“A lot of drinking. But the cavernous church was empty

“And in my forlorn state I went in there. I lit a candle. I knelt and I prayed to … Well, I don’t know who exactly I was praying to. The muse? The gods? The ghost of Tennessee Williams?

“‘Whoever or whatever you are,’ I said, ​‘please let me discover a story.’”

By the next week, Lamb had his the novel’s first sentence, spoken by the protagonist: ​“My mother was a convicted felon, a manic depressive, and Miss Rheingold of 1950.” The words that followed will be in bookstores in November.