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Across Five Aprils

Irene Hunt

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Nov 11, 2022 Werner rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, childrens

First published in 1964, this short (188 pages) novel was written for younger readers, but like other quality fiction for that demographic is also appreciable for adults. I first read it in the mid 60s and liked it, but had never reviewed it here because I felt that I first needed to reread it. This month, an unexpected window of opportunity for working in a short book gave me a chance to do that.

The titular "five Aprils" here are the five from April 1861 to April 1865. Our geographical setting First published in 1964, this short (188 pages) novel was written for younger readers, but like other quality fiction for that demographic is also appreciable for adults. I first read it in the mid 60s and liked it, but had never reviewed it here because I felt that I first needed to reread it. This month, an unexpected window of opportunity for working in a short book gave me a chance to do that.

The titular "five Aprils" here are the five from April 1861 to April 1865. Our geographical setting is Jasper County, Ilinois. This is a real county, located in the southern (but not extreme southern) part of the state; the county seat Newton and the smaller community of Hidalgo, both mentioned in the book, are actual places. Protagonist and viewpoint character Jethro Creighton is nine years old at the outbreak of the war. He's smart and mature for his age (of course in his milieu, as Hunt makes clear, kids are expected to be a lot more mature than most kids --and many adults-- are today), with good instincts; he's the youngest of 12 siblings, of whom at least four are already dead when the book opens. (Maybe five --the one who took off for California in the gold rush of 1849 hasn't been heard of since.) The Creightons are hard-working but poor farmers; Jethro's parents aren't educated, but they respect and value education, and have communicated that attitude to him. This is the story, seen through his eyes, of the effects of the war years on the family and local community, as he comes of age on the home front. (Struggles aren't confined to the battlefields; and as is often true of the best fiction, our main character here will have to make a moral choice.)

Though I'm a fan of historical fiction, the hellish crucible of the Civil War, like World War II and the Holocaust aren't my favorite settings for it; and most of the Civil War historical novels I've read, like this one, are set in the civilian world, away from the wall-to-wall butchery the armies were experiencing. But the long shadow of the war, with the passions and hardships it would bring, fell over every corner of the land, North and South. While southern Illinois didn't have to deal with the ravages of invading armies, it was a border region, largely settled from the South. Like most poor whites on both sides of the Ohio river, most of the settlers of Jasper County had no brief for slavery and might even hate it, but many also had family ties in the South and varying opinions on which side was right. When most males enlisted, those left behind bore with worry for their safety, and all too often grieved for their deaths. Farm labor, already back-breakingly hard, was a lot worse when kids and teen girls were left to plow huge fields alone. Wartime inflation drove prices high; and southern Illinois also saw acts of abolitionist vs. Copperhead terrorism, and the depredations of hungry, desperate and angry army deserters. Hunt brings all of these realities to vivid life.

Her basic sympathies (and those of most of the Creightons) are with the North; but Hunt faithfully reproduces the kinds of debates --often internal as well as external-- that went on before and after the coming of the war. To her credit, she doesn't demonize all those with southern sympathies (or fall into the trap of tarring them all as slavery apologists), nor portray the war as a glorious crusade of unqualifiedly noble heroes on one side against cartoon villains on the other. (She also deserves credit for bringing out, in places, the point that the coming of peace and the end of slavery wasn't equivalent to the "happy ever after" end of a fairy tale; the penniless and uneducated freed blacks now needed to be embraced as part of the national community and have their needs fairly met. One character feared they might wait 50 years for that to happen; sadly, though progress has been made, most have had to wait a lot longer. :-( ) But this isn't mostly a novel of ideas; it's a novel about life: family, personal growth in tough times, facing challenges without flinching. The characters here are enormously realistic and well-drawn, and you come to care about them.

As is sometimes the case in historical fiction, Hunt honestly faces the fact that in pre-modern times, teens might attract --and return-- serious romantic interest from persons over 18. If that scandalizes you, you'll be scandalized here (though the couple involved are only five years apart in age). As I've indicated in other reviews, it doesn't scandalize me. IMO, older teens are biologically adult; whether or not they're mentally adult depends on the individual, and in assessing the age at which someone can marry, I'd say that his/her socio-economic circumstances, goals and ability to carefully consider and stick to serious decisions has to be considered --which is to say, the way the person is socialized, and the kind of cultural milieu he/she lives in, has a lot to do with it. Some 30-year-olds in 2022 aren't emotionally mature enough to marry (or even date!); but I'd say that some teens in the early 1860s were.

In her brief author's note, Irene Hunt (1907-2001) speaks of the considerable research she did for this book, and of her memories of the many stories of this time told to her by her grandfather, to whom she was very close, and who like Jethro was nine at the time of the firing on Ft. Sumter. It shows in the realism of the story here; it's rich in incident and event and in the texture of daily life, and the dialogue rings with the actual dialect of the time and place. (This is fiction in the best Realist tradition.) From the time that I located Jasper County on a map, I suspected that the author herself had roots there. It turns out I was correct; she was Illinois born, and lived in Newton until she was seven. Across Five Aprils was her first novel (though I didn't suspect that --there's no freshman awkwardness about it!), written when she'd already spent decades as a schoolteacher, and published when she was 61. It was critically acclaimed, and her next novel won the Newbery Award. When she died on her 94th birthday, she left behind a corpus of eight novels. This is the only one that I've ever read; but I wouldn't mind reading more of her work. ...more

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Apr 05, 2018 Aaron Swingle marked it as to-read

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