2007  AML Award: Novel Honorable Mention

Presented to:
Dean Hughes

For:
Before the Dawn

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Though historical fiction is well represented in Mormon literature, few novels focus on the years of the Great Depression despite its tremendous impact on an entire generation of Latter-day Saints. In Before the Dawn, Dean Hughes not only portrays the devastation of economic depression on a small Utah town, he does so as a backdrop to another part of history: the development of the modern Relief Society program. As the people of Richards, Utah, slowly see what they believed to be a typical economic slowdown turn into long-term privation and difficulty, the women of the Relief Society discover that their shallow social bonds and careless understanding (and misunderstanding) of one another disintegrate under real trials, to be replaced by true charity and love for one another. Before the Dawn is a valuable addition not only to Mormon historical fiction, but to Mormon literature as a whole.

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