Across Five Aprils

When Ross Milton warns Jeth, "Don't expect peace to be a perfect pearl", he is telling the youth not to expect that, with the ceasing of hostilities, the idyllic world he remembers will be...

Chapter 5 opens, Ellen lay in her bed, limp with the agony of a headache. It always happened when the supply of coffee ran out. When coffee prices soar to seventy cents a pound, with predictions...

Ed makes the remark about "being alone" with the letter because there is a very good chance that it will bring bad news. And in fact Jethro and his mother are alone when he reads Tom's letter to...

Because Hunt tries to write fairly about the Civil War in this novel, there are a great many internal conflicts. One which really struck me was the internal conflict for Bill. Jethro's brother...

First, their barn is burnt down by locals who are angry with the family because Bill has gone to fight for the South. The other is that Tom dies in battle. Jeth starts to question the nature of...

In chapter 9 of Irene Hunt's "Across Five Aprils," President Lincoln wrote to Jethro Creighton in response to a letter that Jethro had written to him concerning the men who had deserted their...

In the beginning of the book, frustrated with the caution and restraint exercised by both men, Jethro compares his father to Abe Lincoln. Jethro's sister Mary has recently died as a result of the...

Sam Gardiner is the owner of the general store in town. He is kind to Jethro when the young boy comes in alone, having been sent to get supplies for his family. There are a number of other men...

Jethro decides to write a letter to Lincoln because he doesn't know what else to do - there are no clear answers to the moral dilemma that he faces. Eb Carron has deserted from the Army and is in...

After three days of fierce combat and casualties on both sides numbering in the tens of thousands, the Union Army defeated the Confederates in what has often been thought of as the turning point in...

A story's mood is the feelings it creates in the reader at any given point. Are you happy when you read? Are you apprehensive, excited, scared, sad? All those emotions are invoked by the mood the...

When Jethro meets Bill on Walnut Hill, Bill tells him that he is leaving to fight for the Confederacy. Bill has just had a terrible fight with John, the brother with whom he has always been the...

John tells about finally meeting up with his brother Bill in a letter written soon after a battle in Nashville, Tennessee, in December of 1864. John, who is fighting for the North, is put in...

At Gettysburg, there is a fierce and bloody battle, lasting over the course of three days, between Confederate troops led by Robert E. Lee and Union soldiers under Ulysses S. Grant. The North...

Matt Creighton first grants his daughter Jenny permission to travel to Washington to be by the side of her beau, Shadrach Yale, who has been critically wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg. He...

Of all his brothers, Jethro has never been close to John. He does not dislike his older brother, but he has not enjoyed the rapport with him that he shares with Bill either. The same reserve...

Matt Creighton means that the reach of the war's destruction is great - the war affects everyone, even those not directly involved in the fighting. Of the four Creighton boys old enough to join...

"Copperhead" was a term given to people in the north who sympathized with the south during the Civil War. They were also called Peace Democrats; they were openly critical of Lincoln and...

Jethro is Ellen's youngest, and I think that in detaining him so long before sending him off to Shad's, she is trying to hold onto him, reluctant to let him go off by himself the mile through the...

This is a novel about the Civil War. The generals and the battles, then, are ones you would expect to read about in a novel about this sad period in U.S. history. The main character, Jethro, is...

Dave Burdow helps Jethro's family a second time when they are rebuilding their barn. Although he is not comfortable enough to come to help with the building himself, he sends a wagonload of cut...

Three of John's letters are actually recounted in Chapter 11. In the first, which arrives sometime during the fall or early winter of 1863, John tells about the infamous Battle of Chickamauga and...

Before Shadrach Yale, the other schoolmasters took turns living with different families throughout the district. When Shad, the new schoolmaster, petitioned for space and privacy, he was granted...

Shadrach Yale is critically injured at the Battle of Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg occurred during "three hot July days" in 1863. It was "a battle of unbelievable bravery and unbelievable...

In the heated conversation amongst the men in Chapter 2, Wilse Graham is the most passionately devoted to the Confederate cause. He says the root cause of the conflict is that "half of the country...

In the immediate aftermath of the war, Jethro "went back to the fields and plowed the same furrows he had plowed for the past four years." His dogged industriousness reflects the Creightons'...

It is actually Jethro who is the "lonely boy," and Shad who sends things that are "like gifts." These things are letters, which Shad writes from Washington while he is recuperating from injuries...

Caught between the competing visions of the war that is tearing apart his country, Jethro Creighton struggles to reconcile the disparate perspectives to which he has been privy just within his own...

Wilse brings "news of the Kentucky country where (Jethro's mother) had been born, and of the relatives from whom she so seldom heard". He also brings news of the feelings of the Kentuckians...

According to the narrator, the Battles of Fredricksburg and Stones River have a discouraging effect on the Union soldiers and their supporters. The former was a bitter defeat for the Union, while...

Ross Milton is very sad on hearing the death of Tom Creighton. He expresses his feelings by writing a letter to the local newspaper in which he pays fulsome tribute to the young man. In that...

The people of the area pitch in and help raise a new barn for the Creightons. It is apparent that there are more folks who support Matt Creighton than condemn him, recognizing what a difficult and...

During the Civil War, there were a lot of people in the North who did not approve of the war. Many of them believed that the Southern states should be free to have slavery if they wanted. Many of...

In the fall of 1862, many men in the community have come together on the Creighton property to help re-build the barn which was burned. Not long after the raising of the barn the Creightons...

The book does not include a family tree as such; that is something you will have to put together yourself. I am assuming that your assignment is to make a family tree for the Creighton family, and...

Jethro helps Eb in Chapter 9 because, when all is said and done, he would not be able to live with himself if he does not help someone who is so in need. In his young life, Jethro "had never been...

Jethro has an excellent relationship with his mother Ellen. In fact, she's more like a big sister than a mom. It's a testament to the closeness of their relationship that Jethro and Ellen often...

The gift is a large quantity of logs. If you head to Chapter 8 and read about ten paragraphs in, you'll see where Jethro is pleasantly surprised, and somewhat embarrassed, to be the recipient of a...

I would argue that the main theme of the story is the effect that war has upon ordinary people. A casual glance at a history book might give us the impression that war is all about epic battles,...

Jethro says that "the saddest and most cruel April" of the five years of the Civil War was the last, in 1865. In that April, the end of the war had finally been announced with the terms of peace...

The soldiers' feeling towards Burnside is captured clearly in the understated ending of Shadrach's letter in Chapter 8. Shadrach says, "I should not like to live with Ambrose Burnside's thoughts...

Across Five Aprils takes place during the Civil War. The Creighton family mostly supports the North, but one of the sons (Bill) decides to fight on the Southern side. One day Jethro Creighton,...

Chapter 5 starts out with Jethro's mother, Ellen, having a headache. It's a result of her body becoming dependent on caffeine from coffee. She is going through withdrawal symptoms. Jethro is...

The five Aprils of the story mark significant events of the Civil War, such as the firing on Fort Sumter in 1861 and President Lincoln’s assassination in 1865, both of which occurred in April. The...

Although all wars are tragic, the especially difficult part of civil wars is that so often brother ends up fighting against brother. Living in the border state of Illinois during the American...

Eb returned to his old regiment, which was stationed in Mississippi; he determined to work hard and do a good job for them until his term of enlistment was fulfilled. Eb had been in a deep...

The Battle of Chickamauga took place in the mountains of Tennessee in September of 1863. In a significant Union defeat, the Northern Army of the Cumberland, led by Major General Rosecrans, faced...

In the final chapters of Irene Hunt's young reader's novel Across Five Aprils, we are not actually directly told what happens to John Creighton after the war. However, we can deduce what happens...

He is being light-hearted and jesting with her. His older brothers, to tease her, sometimes call her that, so when he is out in the field working with her, feeling happy and content, he calls her...

The people of the north are beginning to doubt the leadership. McClellan had been well respected, but now people are questioning whether he can assure a victory. The army had victories at both...