Across Five Aprils

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Early in Across Five Aprils, Irene Hunt's novel of a family struggling to survive the divisions within families as well as across the nation during the American Civil War, there are hints of a...

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...

According to most sources, Irene Hunt (1907-2001), the author of Across Five Aprils, died on her 94th birthday in 2001. However, I have found several conflicting dates and locations. Most dates...

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'...

"Across Five Aprils is a historical novel about a boy who grows up during the Civil War. Jethro's family farms in Southern Illinois and is divided about which side of the war to...

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...

In Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt, Jenny Creighton falls in love in Shadrach Yale, the local schoolteacher. Shad, however, goes off to war, and he is wounded at the Battle of Gettysburg. Jenny's...

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...

Jethro is working out in the fields when he hears about Lincoln's assassination. He is still basking in the glow of the news of the long-awaited cease-fire, and when he thinks back on the moment,...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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,...

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...

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...

The victory at Fort Henry, followed quickly by a second at Fort Donelson, were the first for the Union in the war. After suffering defeat in the opening battles at Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, and...

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...

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...

"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 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...

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 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...

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...

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...

His decision about deserters was most fair and was one of the reasons he became one of the most respected presidents of all time. Lincoln was not concerned with just winning the war, but with...

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...

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...

At the beginning of Chapter 3, the people who lived in the small towns of Illinois are said to be "bound to the tedium of isolation." They are hungry for contact with the outside world and the...

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...

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...