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Shaky family, explosive neighborhood: A review of Across Five Aprils

Irene Hunt’s grandfather told her what it was like to be a 9-year-old boy in Southern Illinois, with several brothers in the Union Army and one brother wearing gray.  Hunt turned those stories into the Newbury Award-winning Across Five Aprils.

In this book, we enter the world of 9-year-old Jethro Creighton:

A south breeze brought the scent of lilacs and sweet fennel to his nostrils and set all the frosty-green leaves of a silver poplar tree to trembling. There was a column of wood-smoke feathering up from the kitchen chimney, a sign that Jenny was already making preparations for a hearty noon meal. From the neighboring field across the creek he could hear the shouted commands to the plow horses as Matt Creighton and his two older sons got on with the spring plowing.

It was a fine morning; many people around him were troubled, he knew, but that was a part of the adult world which he accepted as a matter of course. Adults were usually troubled. There were chinch bugs and grasshoppers, months of drought, elections, slavery, secession, talk of war—the adult world of trouble, though, was not real enough to dim the goodness of an April morning.

Hunt brilliantly shows family members at the supper table, discussing the big questions that people are still arguing about 150 years later.  As some brothers (and one cousin) decide to enlist in the Union Army, Jethro’s brother, Bill, is torn and eventually enlists in the Confederate Army.

We observe Jethro’s family relationships.  When 10-year-old Jethro bravely rides a wagon into town to sell crops and buy goods, we see a contentious man interrogate him about Bill’s Confederate service.  The man spreads rumors that Jethro’s family is disloyal, and then the man burns down Jethro’s family barn.  The reign of terror ends when someone shoots the contentious man in the backside with buckshot.

Hunt masterfully shows family members experiencing separation, sickness, anxiety, and death.  She also shows a cousin deserting, telling Jethro of his shame, and Jethro asking Lincoln to let the cousin return to active duty.

Jethro’s world parallels that of Iowa Confederates.  Out of 76 Iowa Confederates, roughly one of every five had a divided family, that is, at least one immediate family member served the Union.  In the case of one Iowa Confederate, there was a further division between him and his Republican father-in-law who was a personal and political friend of Abraham Lincoln.

The existence of any divided family suggests emotional divisions, and this raises a couple of questions:

  1. Did family members try to reconcile after the war?
  2. Were they successful?

Iowa Confederates’ post-war experiences suggest that if immediate family members didn’t reconcile, the next generation sometimes experienced separation and rejection.

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David Connon

David Connon has spent nearly two decades researching dissenters in Iowa: Grinnell residents who helped on the Underground Railroad, and their polar opposites, Iowa Confederates. He shares some of these stories with audiences across the state through the Humanities Iowa Speakers Bureau. He worked as an interpreter at Living History Farms for eleven seasons. Connon is a member of Sons of Union Veterans, an associate member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, and a member of the Des Moines Civil War Round Table. His articles have appeared in Iowa Heritage Illustrated, Iowa History Journal, Illinois Magazine, and local newspapers in both states.

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. Jerry Barnes

    5 Nov 2018

    Like your style of writing. Very expressive

    1. David Connon

      5 Nov 2018

      Thank you for your kind comment, Jerry!

  2. Marc Naigeon

    6 Nov 2018

    A very interesting entry. The book shows very well how major political issues like those ones ignite fiery passions and generate division everywhere, including within families. I suppose it’s because those issues, having to do with race and identity, are the kind that define a nation and a society, as much as each of the individuals that are part of it. Other countries have experienced similar fractures but what strikes me as a foreigner is the lasting effect of the Civil War in the U.S., the depth of the wound it has inflicted on America as a nation, and how difficult it is for the scar to heal – if it ever does. It raises the question of whether America is one nation, or rather a collection of nations with different visions and aspirations that coexist more or less peacefully on the same territority.

    1. David Connon

      6 Nov 2018

      Hi, Marc. I appreciate your thoughtful comments and questions. I wonder how long it took individual divided families and/or neighborhoods to heal from the Civil War. Thanks for weighing in.

  3. KATHLEEN ROSO

    8 Nov 2018

    Can’t wait to read this book. Thanks David.

    1. David Connon

      8 Nov 2018

      Thank you for your kind comment, Kathleen.

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