Across Five Aprils Chapter 6 Summary

The morning after Jethro returns from his trip to Newton, his father suffers a heart attack. Although the stricken man survives, he is never the same: "the vigorous, erect Matt Creighton [is] gone, [and] a man who look[s] twenty years older [has] taken his place." Jethro will always remember that day in late March of 1862 as the day he left childhood behind. As an eighty-pound stripling of only ten years old, he becomes the man of the house; now, he will labor from dawn to dusk to ensure the family's livelihood, and he will make decisions about the well-being of the farm on his own.

By the second week of April, the fields are ready for plowing. Jethro and Jenny do their best to get land ready for planting, while Ellen...