Book Review: Across Five Aprils
Rated by 1 member
What Parents Should Know
This beautifully written and heart-rending story effectively
depicts the suffering caused by war.
Common Sense Media Review
Irene Hunt has drawn from the stories told by her
grandfather, plus family letters and extensive historical
research, to create a novel that vividly depicts the grand
scope of the Civil War, with its generals and its battles,
while also showing its intimate impact on the lives of the
ordinary families involved.
In an eloquent but often folksy style, Hunt draws the reader into the farming life of southern Illinois, where young men see a chance of proving their manhood and speak of the war as being fun. Through the four long years of war, Jethro discovers the truth, with the death of one brother and the virtual loss of another when he chooses to fight for the Confederacy.
This is more than the story of a young boy, however. It is also a novel of a mother sending her children off to war, of a wife raising two children on her own, of a young woman facing the prospect of losing the man she loves. Hunt engages readers of all ages as she shows the impact of war on all, from Abraham Lincoln down to a neighboring farmer who worries about his son "becomin' a hardened man" for whom human life will be "forever cheap ... and decency somethin' to mock at."
Brilliantly representing the passionate feelings of both sides in the Civil War, Hunt brings the reader to a fuller understanding of this conflict, showing both the futility of war and the breadth of its human consequences.
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