Before the Dawn
WW2 launched a huge movement of people, particularly young men of marriageable age, between countries and between continents. The multitudes of romantic encounters and culture shocks which resulted still keep historical novelists busy generations later.
At first sight Before the Dawn is a simple love story between an American soldier and an English girl in rural Devon. The story is told in alternate chapters by the two lovers, Hank and Ruby. In due course Hank sails away to invade Normandy and is posted missing in action. In fact, he is a POW and returns to England after the war to find that Ruby is engaged to another.
Ruby’s side of the story is much the more convincing. Emma Pass is excellent in exploring the impact of a large American camp on a small Devonshire town and the excitement, the attraction and the antipathy caused by these exotic strangers. The only credibility issue I had was the ease with which Ruby forged the papers giving her father’s consent to her marriage.
Hank’s military career, his family background, and the unlikely way in which his problems are finally resolved are less plausible. I felt that the focus of the story was Ruby and her emotional dilemmas and that Hank was there to provide the plot line, but perhaps that is true of most romantic fiction.
