Summary

Wilse fills the Creighton family in on what has been going on in Kentucky, with the family and with the impending war. Jethro learns that there are two sides to the quarrel between the North and South.

Shadrach returns from Newton with news that Fort Sumter has been fired upon by the South, and that the Union general has surrendered. Since Congress is not in session, war has not yet been declared, but it appears certain.

In Chapters one and two of Across Five Aprils, there is a transformation, not only of the nation but of the Creighton family itself.

The nation moves from a period of quarreling and and disagreement to the beginning of war. Simultaneously, we find discord being introduced to the Creighton family unit, as circumstances are being put into place that will cause Jethro to put his childhood behind him, soon to be replaced with the responsibilities of an adult.

In the second chapter, although it has not yet been made personal to him, Jethro begins to understand that war is something more than a show of patriotism and soldiers marching.

In one sense, the first two chapters encapsulate the whole of the novel. We are given a sense as to who the characters are, and an idea as to the parts that they will play in the story. As the entire family gathers around Shadrach at the end of chapter two, they don’t yet realize that this is the last time they will all be together as one family. As the second chapter ends, none of the characters will be the same again.