Across Five Aprils

Summary

Across Five Aprils follows the Creighton family of Jasper County in southern Illinois through the Civil War, from April 1861 to April 1865, as seen by the youngest son, Jethro, who is nine when the story opens. The family farm is worked by Matt and Ellen Creighton and their grown and growing children: John, a married son with a family of his own nearby; Bill, thoughtful and gentle, the brother Jethro loves best; Tom, eager for adventure; Jenny, close to Jethro in spirit; and their cousin Eb Carron, raised in the household. The schoolmaster Shadrach Yale, who loves Jenny, lends Jethro books and teaches him to think. The Creightons have already known grief, including the death of a daughter, Mary, killed when a drunken Travis Burdow fired wildly while chasing her and her young man home from a dance; Matt kept the neighbours from lynching him. News of Fort Sumter divides the region. A visiting Kentucky relative, Wilse Graham, argues the Southern side at the supper table, and the family's sympathies are mixed, as many in that border area were. Tom, Eb and John join the Union army, and Shad later enlists. Bill, who hates slavery but cannot fight against the South's people, quarrels with John and leaves to join the Confederacy. Matt suffers a heart attack, and the work of the farm falls on Jethro and Jenny. Because of Bill, some neighbours treat the Creightons as traitors: a gang connected with the bully Guy Wortman burns their barn and pours coal oil in their well. Jethro, driving the wagon alone to Newton, is threatened by Wortman and protected by Dave Burdow, Travis's father, who later helps the family. Ross Milton, the editor of the Newton newspaper, befriends Jethro and shames the barn-burners in print. Word comes that Tom has been killed at the Battle of Shiloh. Letters from the front teach Jethro the names of generals and battles, and the war's waste. In the hard winter of 1863 Eb deserts and hides, starving, in the woods; rather than turn him in or abandon him, Jethro writes to President Lincoln, who answers that deserters who return to their regiments may be pardoned, and Eb goes back. Shad is gravely wounded at Gettysburg, and Jenny travels east to nurse him and marry him. The war ends in April 1865, joy is cut short by Lincoln's assassination, and Shad and Jenny come home with a plan for Jethro to live with them and go on with his education. Follett published the novel in 1964; it was a Newbery Honor Book in 1965.

Top Lessons

• A house divided

  Hunt shows the Civil War as a family quarrel in which those on both sides were loved. Bill's choice wounds the Creightons, yet they never stop loving him, and the novel lets a young reader feel why Lincoln spoke of a house divided.

• Mercy repays mercy

  Years before the war Matt stopped a mob from lynching Travis Burdow, and during the war Dave Burdow protects Jethro and helps the family. Lincoln's pardon of Eb repeats the pattern on a national scale.

• Growing up in hard times

  Jethro takes on a man's work at ten and eleven, ploughing, driving to town and making moral choices alone. The book shows responsibility shaping character, and Shad's lessons show that learning helps a boy understand his times rather than merely suffer them.

• The cost of war at home

  Letters bring news of battles far away, but the war's cost is counted in Illinois too: in Tom's death, Matt's illness, the burned barn and the empty places at the table. Hunt makes the distant war personal without glorifying it.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine is in the background. Matt Creighton's heart attack leaves him an invalid early in the war and moves the farm's labour onto a child, a common pattern on 19th-century farms where illness of the father threatened the family's living. Shadrach Yale's grave wound at Gettysburg and Jenny's journey to nurse him reflect the Union's crowded military hospitals around Washington, where many wounded soldiers depended on family members and volunteers. Eb's return as a hungry, sick deserter hints at the hunger and exhaustion behind much Civil War desertion. The family's grief for Tom, and for children lost before the war, is handled with restraint. None of this is given in clinical detail.

• Early chapters, 1861

  Matt suffers a heart attack and cannot work; Jethro and Jenny take over the farm.

• 1862

  The family learns that Tom has been killed at Shiloh.

• 1863

  Shad is badly wounded at Gettysburg and Jenny travels east to nurse him.