Across Five Aprils

Hunt, Irene. Across Five Aprils. 2011. 224p. 347 mins. ISBN 9780792787068. Available as an audiobook from Overdrive.

War tends to split families, and the Civil War is no exception. Though Illinois is firmly in the Union camp, the southern tier of the state harbors Confederate sympathies. Large families often find themselves divided by the issues of state rights and slavery. The Creighton family is one such group. Farmers on what was once the frontier, the Creighton family survives with everyone contributing. But while Matt Creighton and his sons John and Tom support the Union, Bill, Jethro’s favorite, supports the South, causing tensions at home.

When war finally breaks in April 1861, Jethro is at first thrilled. But the division within the Creightons soon affects them, as John and Tom join the federal army, while Bill departs to fight for the Confederacy. Jethro, his sister Jenny, and his parents follow the war through newspaper articles, and at first the news is dire. Union forces are defeated in several engagements. Jethro’s teacher at school, Shadrach Yale, helps Jethro understands the battles and what is at stake. In love with young Jenny, Shadrach requests her hand in marriage before he leaves to join the Union, but Matt Creighton refuses, deeming his daughter too young at fourteen.

Soon John, who is married with children, begins to send letters from the front. Matt Creighton suffers a heart attack and becomes partially paralysed. Now it is up to Jethro to run the family farm. Meanwhile, Bill’s sympathies for the South have angered some of the locals, who take it out on the Creighton by burning their barn and poisoning their well. As the conflict deepens, and as brothers fight brothers, the Creighton family is torn asunder, and Jethro realizes that things will never go back to how they were before the war. When Tom is killed in combat, Jethro fears that his brother Bill could have fired the shot that killed him.

As more family members get shot, desert, or become just plain tired of the war, Jethro looks forward to a time when the war will end, for surely all wars eventually conclude. Sadly, the end of the Civil War does not bring the relief that Jethro was looking for. However, over the past five Aprils Jethro discovers that pain and sorrow, just like war, eventually end.