Across Five Aprils By: Irene Hunt

This novel won a Newberry Honor in 1998. I listened to this on tape as opposed to reading it and it is a good thing. I would have never made it through otherwise. It was all I could do not to fast forward through a large part of the story. I will grant you that I am not a fan of historical fiction. History is something I have learned that I must accept, sort of like eating brussel sprouts, because it is important. However, I feel like reading historical fiction is a bit like putting chocolate sauce on those brussel sprouts in order to make them taste better, it just doesn't work. If I am going to learn about history I would rather focus on the real thing. There is quite enough real drama in the human existence without making up more of it. That is not to say that I hate all historical fiction. I enjoyed The Little House Series and the American Girl novels are well written. But this novel was almost unbearable. In my defense, because I am aware of my own bias, I have two other opinions in this matter to back me up. My husband has an undergraduate degree in history. He loves all things historic, especially the Civil War. When I told him I was reading Across Five Aprils and was not enjoying it he said, " well, that is a rather dry book". In class last Monday I mentioned my dislike of historic fiction and the novel in question. A classmate said, Oh, well that is a dry story. I rest my case. The story starts out fair enough. Irene Hunt focuses on an Illinois farming family. As you get to know them and their lives you are interested in them and their fate. However, about half way through the book Ms. Hunt decides to desert this family and begin a painfully precise account of many of the battles and leaders of the War between the states. It happened so suddenly that I thought for sure the tape I was listening to was missing a huge part of the book. I rewound the tape, tried both sides of the next tape and then went to the library to check the text. To my dismay the tape was not flawed. At the end of Chapter 9 the main character receives a response to a letter he had written to Abraham Lincoln without the knowledge of his family. The reader has been led to this point with great anticipation. The letter is received, read to the family and then never mentioned again accept in passing. We get no reaction from the family, no resolution to the problem that caused Jeth to write the letter in the first place, nothing. Cripes!!!! After that awful let down the reader, me, is left to struggle through to the end of the story. Even an expert on the Civil War would have had trouble keeping up with all of the facts that are thrown at us in lightning speed. It is almost as if, in the middle of the story Irene Hunt was body snatched and some extremely boring history professor replaced her. Now there is a story I would like to read. My apologies to Irene Hunt, Civil War fans and History Professors everywhere. I did not like this book.