April Morning

infobox Book |
name = April Morning
orig title = April Morning
translator =


author = Howard Fast
cover_artist =
country = USA
language = English
series =
genre = Historical fiction, young adult
publisher = Bantam
release_date = 1961
media_type = Print (Paperback)
pages = 202
isbn = ISBN 0-553-27322-1
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"April Morning" is a 1961 novel by Howard Fast depicting the Battle of Lexington and Concord from the perspective of a fictional teenager, Adam Cooper. It takes place in the 27-hour period from April 18, 1775 to the aftermath of the battle. During that stretch, Adam comes of age and resolves his difficulties with his intellectually demanding father.

While the novel was not originally written as a young adult novel, it has increasingly been assigned in middle school English and social studies classes, due to the age of the protagonist and Fast’s meticulous efforts to recreate the texture of daily life in colonial America and the political currents on the eve of the American Revolution. In 1987 a film version was made for television starring Chad Lowe as Adam and Tommy Lee Jones as his father. It is often shown in classes where the book is read. Legendary director John Ford had intended to follow up his film "7 Women" with a film version of "April Morning", but soon became too sick and had to pull out of the project. Had Ford had his way, he would have had his frequent collaborator John Wayne play Adam Cooper's father. Ford once said that out of all the film projects he was not able to do for one reason or another, the only one he really regretted not doing was "April Morning", because it could have been his early gift to America's bicentennial.

Plot summary

The novel is organized into eight chapters named for the times of the day when they occur. The whole novel takes place in a time span of two days. In that short time many dramatic events happen. The story is about a boy living during the time of the Battles of Lexington and Concord who comes of age. It was the eve of the American Revolutionary War.

"The Evening"

During this time, Adam goes over to the Simmonses' and takes their daughter, Ruth, out for a walk. Despite their family relationship (Ruth is Adam's second cousin, once removed), there is the possibility of a romance between them, as Ruth once told everyone that she was going to marry Adam when they grew up.

With Ruth, Adam can finally vent about what he feels to be his father's constant belittling of him. He snaps at Ruth when she gossips about a bigamist relative of his, but shortly afterwards he kisses her and ends the walk on a high note.

However, Adam's mood is soured when he returns home and finds his younger brother Levi has cleaned his bird gun. Even though he did a good job, Adam is incensed that Levi would do such a potentially dangerous thing and berates Levi in terms similar to those his own father uses on him.

As he lays awake in bed that night, Adam overhears his parents talking about him downstairs. His father is aghast when his mother tells him that Adam thinks he doesn't love him, and says quite emphatically that he does. Adam finally falls asleep to the sound of his mother reading a book to his father.

"The Night"

Levi, Adam's little brother, has a nightmare, and goes to tell Adam about it. While Levi is in his brother's room they hear hoofbeats. A midnight rider comes and says that the British are coming. The militia's ranks are swelled by the local boys, including Adam, who worries that his father will again humiliate him by not letting him sign the muster book. However, Moses merely looks up, surprised, when Adam signs in, and later tells his mother that Adam is no longer a boy in his eyes. Adam is happy that Moses let him sign. Moses helps his son prepare his bird gun for combat and, for the first time, tells him to go slowly with Ruth. After an early breakfast of cornmeal mush topped with honey, Adam goes out with his father in the early morning hours to await the British on the green.

"The Morning"

About 70 men and boys gather on Lexington Green to wait for the British; mostly joking around and finding other ways to keep their minds off what might happen and whether there will be a war or not. The British finally arrive shortly after dawn and encounter the two lines of militia. The colonists hold their uncocked weapons at their sides. The British commander, Major Pitcairn, orders them to disperse, but they make no reply. A random shot was fired, and the first person shot by British soldiers is Moses Cooper, Adam's father. Adam's father being killed is very important, because this is one element that helps Adam come of age. The colonistis immedietly began to flee. The British fire at the colonists, killing several more, including the militia's commander, Jonas Parker, who is run through twice with a bayonet. None of the militia-men fired at the British. Adam hides from the British soldiers in a nearby smokehouse, where he falls asleep for a while. Then Levi finds him and tells him what has happened since the battle, and the two commiserate over their father's death. He tells Levi to go home and tell everyone he's safe for now and will come home later when it is safe to do so.

"The Forenoon"

After a short sleep, Adam is awakened by the sound of two British soldiers outside debating whether to burn the smokehouse down. He is able to watch them through a crack in the wood. They are both in favor of doing so, but since it would be against their orders luckily for Adam, they leave it alone.

They leave, and he escapes, trying to use shortcuts through the woods. He runs into two British soldiers, and one shoots at him but his weapon misfires. He escapes across a meadow and is met by an old man, Solomon Chandler, who calms him and encourages him to grieve and weep over his father. Chandler tells him he has come to manhood, but Adam still doesn't believe it. Chandler tells him about his life, having gone to sea on merchant ships as Adam has sometimes wished to, and then come back to fight in the French and Indian War. He assures Adam that despite having run away when the shooting started on the green, he is not a coward.

The two set out via back roads and short cuts for a fork in a nearby brook where they can meet up with other local militiamen. Along the way, Chandler reassures Adam that the British can be defeated since whether they get to the arms stores at Concord or not, they will still have to return to Boston and they have disadvantages the colonists do not, such as heavy packs and weapons they do not know how to aim correctly at anything other than close range.

They eventually meet up with other militiamen, and Adam tells them all what happened in Lexington.

"The Midday"

More militias eventually drift in, the result of the highly coordinated information network the Committees have set up. They learn that the British reached Concord, failed to find much in the way of munitions as those had been moved out of town before they came, and that they took heavy casualties at Old North Bridge.

They gather along the road back to Boston and plan an ambush against the retreating British when they hear gunfire in the distance and another rider informs them that the British are just up the road. Many familiar faces from Lexington come, and Adam realizes that fewer men died from his hometown than he had feared.

The British troops arrive, bedraggled and wounded from several previous ambushes. Adam is among those firing at the British from extreme close range, but despite his father's death he does not enjoy the experience. The militias run away afterwards, but the British do not pursue, realizing that it would only invite more casualties and waste effort.

A half-mile from the ambush site, Adam and Joseph Simmons come across other militiamen stealing effects from the body of a dead British soldier, a boy roughly Adam's own age. Simmons rebukes them and chases them away, but Adam's response to the scene is to vomit.

The British are again approaching, so the militias lay another ambush. This time Adam wants to shoot to keep his mind off what he has just seen, and does. The militias again retreat further down the road, to a barn where four riflemen sit sniping at the British from great distances. One of them is Solomon Chandler, who brags to Adam that he shot a British officer off his horse from three hundred yards. Adam realizes that, while he too now has what it takes to kill in warfare, and will do so in the future, unlike Chandler he does not take joy in it. He recalls the British wagon carrying the wounded and dead, and even finds it in himself to sympathize with them.

The militias continue their guerrilla tactics, laying ambushes for the British and then retreating through the woods to set another one, as the skirmish at Lexington showed they could not survive a direct confrontation. They meet up with others at a nearby barn, and decide to set yet another trap for the British along a nearby road, hoping that if they can tie them up more militias will be mobilized and increase the odds in their favor.

Along the way they encounter, and defeat, a British cavalry patrol, taking another wounded teenage soldier prisoner in the process.

"The Afternoon"

Their group of militiamen meets up with yet more from neighboring towns who have answered the call in the wake of the morning's events. One suggests that the whole combined group should divide into three smaller groups to trap the British in another nearby area suited for ambush, and hold them there for a few hours until even more colonists can show up. Together, the force will inflict a decisive and deadly victory on the British. Since it sounds like more of a plan than anything else the militias have done all day, and those few with military experience agree with it, they begin to blockade the road and lay their trap.

Along the way they see smoke rising from the vicinity of Lexington and think that the village has been burnt by the British. Adam concludes he has nothing to go home to and decides to stick with the fight. The attack on the British goes as planned, but Adam falls asleep during it.

He is awakened sometime later by the voices of Joseph Simmons and the Reverend worrying about which of them will have to tell his mother that he, as well as his father, is dead. They are relieved when he gets up and tells them he was merely asleep, although they regard him with a sort of awe for being able to fall asleep during a battle.

They give Adam leave to return to Lexington as he has had a long day and done his duty. When he gets there, he finds that only three houses were burned, and not the Coopers'. His family is relieved to see him, as they had heard that he was dead.

His father's body has been brought home and lies in a coffin downstairs. Levi tells him of seeing British dead and wounded brought through the village, of the rude behavior of the redcoats (one of whom even threatened to shoot one of his friends). He wants to know how many British Adam killed, and is disappointed when Adam says he doesn't know. He thinks Adam should at least have gotten wounded. Adam tells him not to talk like that, as his mother is deep in grief for her husband. He tells Levi he has to get used to that and face up to the new realities and be there for their mother.

Adam bathes and dresses in clean clothes, and the family bears Moses Cooper to the church with the other fallen from that morning. As Adam looks over the damage left from the battle, he realizes that unlike his brother, he has left childhood behind. He tells Joseph Simmons that the night before, his father had put his arm around him as they went out to the muster, the first and only time he felt the love his father expressed for him.

Joseph tells him there will be another muster of local militiamen the next day for the siege of Boston, but he isn't sure that he'll sign his position as a blacksmith, which is extremely important to the village. Adam is not committed yet, but may sign.

"The Evening"

Adam walks back to his home and thinks back to when he played "Pontiac," a sort of cowboys-and-indians, as a child.

At the house, many neighbors have come to visit and prepare food. Adam has a new appreciation for why so much food is cooked for the recently bereaved: "it is a tribute to the living, who are in need of it at the time." He notes that his mother, who used to make references to his excessive appetite, now seems to be worried that he might starve.

Ruth is there again, and they talk. They take some fresh candles to the church for Adam's father. She asks about the battle in the morning on the green, and he tells her about some of the things he saw. She worries that the British will come again and the same thing will happen. "It isn't the same anymore," he tells her. "Today we knew that we wouldn't fight. But now we know that we must, and we're learning how."

After they sit quietly in the church for a few minutes, Ruth asks Adam if he loves her, and after thinking about it he says yes. She tells him she loves him, and they kiss and part.

Most of the neighbors have left when Adam returns home. He has a final conversation with his grandmother about his father, in which she reminds him about the impending decision required from him about mustering for the siege at Boston. Adam says that he doesn't know what he will do, but that he will rest for a few days.

He goes up to bed and falls asleep, thinking for one last time about how both his childhood and the world he knew are "over and done with and gone for all time."

Publication information

"April Morning", by Howard Fast. Originally published 1961. Mass Market Paperback: Bantam, 1983. ISBN: 0553273221