The War Comes Home

It’s hardly a new concept that American families were torn asunder by the Civil War. Still, “Across Five Aprils” stands out as a particularly sharp and moving look at the family of Jethro Creighton, who is 9 years old and living on his family’s farm in southern Illinois when word that war has broken out arrives one April morning.

As it happens, a relative from Kentucky is visiting and in conversation around the dinner table, we see how the family is split over matters of slavery, national unity and Abraham Lincoln’s determination. Soon, Jethro’s brothers, friends and his teacher leave to join the Union and Confederate armies and Jethro must confront the biggest issue of his life: whose side is he on? What does loyalty mean? What is the meaning of so much sacrifice? Because of his youth, he remains behind to continue working the family farm and he is physically far from the battlefields. But emotionally he is as caught up in the events as any American alive at the time. As the war unfolds, questions about different issues, such as military leadership, desertion, courage, all arise and a maturing Jethro deals with all of them, some in thought, others by action.

Younger readers—this book is written for fourth to eighth-graders—may struggle with the dialect. The “fer” and “git” and “air” for “are” might make them stumble and some may find it unnecessarily distracting. Still, it adds to the realism of the story. One of the better aspects of this book is its sense of life at the time—a hardworking but slower-paced life where news of events arrives days or weeks after the fact and people can only wait to find out how their lives will change.

It is also a pretty even-handed account of the views on both sides of the war, with its wide variety of groups pushing from the edges to force events to go their way or politicians to act in ways they prefer.

Members of one family could easily be divided into factions and as Jethro’s brother Bill joins the Confederate army, while others become Union soldiers, the young boy takes abuse from some townspeople who consider the brother a traitor. In fact, the mob denouncing Jethro’s family because of Bill’s actions are, not surprisingly, patriots in name only, shouting against traitors but doing nothing to serve the Union. And about the time they move against Jethro’s farm and set the buildings on fire, word comes that another son has died in service with the Union Army. Another relative comes home a deserter but is eventually reprieved, thanks to Jethro’s letter to Abe Lincoln.

And finally, the war ends and for a brief period of time, there is joy on Jethro’s farm. He is sure he wants to head to Washington D.C. to meet Lincoln but then comes the horrible news of the president’s assassination. Jethro is to remember that April as the worst of all of them. Slowly, though, most of his relatives come home from the war and the now 13-year-old Jethro, who has for the duration of the war, carried the farm by doing most of the field labor, learns he is about to become a boy again and return to school. With that, the pain and burdens of the war are lifted from his shoulders.

Author Irene Hunt won a Newbery Award for this book, which was based on the stories of her grandfather, who was a boy during the Civil War. His stories add a richness to her account that could never be found in archives—you feel him speaking across the ages to young people today.

It’s a marvelous book that deals with maturity and family responsibility set against an unparalleled national crisis. It would be hard to find a better book on the topic.