April Morning

The use of the name Adam is not incidental to this theme. April Morning is full of biblical allusions, and Adam is not only the first man in the Bible, but the only man who has no childhood. Adam’s sudden promotion to adulthood is the novel’s emotional center. There is something of a bait-and-switch in the first four chapters, in that the reader is led to believe the novel will track the relationship between Adam and his father. When that storyline abruptly terminates, the reader is effectively confused and disoriented, a literary technique that helps the reader experience Adam’s own internal chaos in the moment. The remainder of the book uses the battle and Adam’s reflections to depict the experience of boyhood giving way to manhood, largely through trauma and loss.

April Morning wears this theme on its sleeve, so to speak. There is no subtlety to it, which is not to say it is heavy handed, but rather that the other characters in the story generally realize what is happening to Adam and speak of it directly, even as Adam himself realizes it and informs the reader through his internal narrations of how he is adjusting and growing vis-à-vis the death of his father. Solomon Chandler is the first adult to speak to Adam after his father’s death, and he states outright, “you’ve lost your youth and come to manhood, all in a few hours, Adam Cooper. Oh, that’s painful. That is indeed” (115). Adam demurs, saying he is not yet an adult, but Solomon tells him to be patient.

In the space of a single day Adam sees his father murdered, his community attacked, and his own life threatened; he even sees himself attempting to kill another man in the field of battle. All these events give Adam insight into the human condition, in addition to a degree of strength and courage he did not possess before. Yet it is not battle or wisdom that sounds the death knell of Adam’s childhood, but rather the presence of Granny, Sarah, and Levi. His family will require of him a level of responsibility that is undeniable and, unlike the battle, a daily reality. When speaking of his mother after the battle, Adam narrates, “For her, I had to be a man with terrible urgency; there was no time to dream about the games I had played on the common” (193).

Adam accepts this reality in the end, but not happily. He is fearful of what the future holds and resents that his childhood has ended so capriciously and with such terrible finality. Nevertheless, there is a consistent undercurrent of optimism with regard to Adam’s future. His youth and the trauma of seeing his father cut down are offset by the strength of his mother and Granny, and by the stabilizing presence of Joseph and Ruth Simmons, both of whom love Adam in their own way, and both of whom pledge to stand by him as he enters this new stage of life.