37 pages • 1 hour read
Sharon M. DraperDarkness Before Dawn
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
A short introductory section places the narrator, Keisha Montgomery, at her high school graduation ceremony. She is nervous because she is class president and will have to give a speech. As she waits for the ceremony to begin, Keisha thinks back to her previous losses. Her friend Rob died in a car crash the year before. Her boyfriend Andy also died that April. Keisha begins her story for the reader on the day of Andy’s death.
As the novel begins, Keisha is a junior at Hazelwood High School in urban Cincinnati. When homeroom attendance is called one April morning, Andy is missing. Nobody thinks anything of his absence, and Keisha spends time with her friend Rhonda, talking about the latter’s boyfriend, Tyrone.
Later that night, Rhonda calls to tell Keisha that Andy shot himself with his father’s hunting rifle. His little brother Monty found the body. Keisha is furious with her mother when she learns that Andy had called and asked for Keisha at midnight the night before, but her mother told him it was too late to disturb her.
Keisha’s mother agrees to drive them both to Andy’s house to offer comfort to the grieving family. Her other friends assemble there, too, and they remember how disturbed Andy became after Rob’s death. Andy had been driving drunk and caused the accident that killed Rob. Robbie’s younger sister Kiara arrives on the scene, still processing the grief from her brother’s death. Keisha does what she can to comfort Monty, who has been lost in the shuffle during the tragedy.
Chapter 2 Summary
Keisha recalls that the rest of junior year passed like a blur. Grief counselors were summoned to the school, but everyone remained numb from the loss of another one of their friends. Everyone’s mood improves at the end of the school year when the annual all-school picnic is held in a state park. Keisha invites Monty to go because it had previously been a tradition for Andy to bring his little brother along.
At the picnic, Keisha encounters Rob’s younger sister, who now insists on being called by her middle name. She is still struggling with the loss of her brother and Andy when she says:
‘I just want to be called Joyelle. Is that too much to ask?’ She started to cry again. ‘I want some joy in my life—all the time,’ she said angrily. ‘If anybody wants to talk to me, they have to call me with joy on their lips when they do,’ she added almost defiantly (20-21).
Later that afternoon, Rhonda arrives to confide in Keisha about her romance with Tyrone. The two have gotten very close, and Rhonda is fighting the urge to get too physical too soon with her boyfriend. Despite the gloom of losing two classmates, all the high school students seem to enjoy their day in the park.
Chapter 3 Summary
The story moves forward to September, and the former juniors have now become seniors. Everyone is excited by the prospect of graduating at the end of the year despite the hurdles and hard work necessary for them to get there. Joyelle and her best friend Angel are now ninth graders and trying to adjust to life in high school.
On the first day of school, Principal Hathaway addresses the student body and introduces all the new teachers. Among them is his son Jonathan. As a college student majoring in education, part of Jonathan’s schooling involves a year of student observation. He will be helping out as an athletic coach at Hazelwood.
All the senior girls notice how handsome Jonathan is: “His clothes […] were soft and tailored, and hung on his muscular body with ease. […] His slacks were neatly pressed, and he brushed a minute speck of dust from them as he smiled at the crowd with confidence” (37).
After the assembly, Keisha and Rhonda meet a new senior transfer student. She is an attractive girl named Jalani who comes from Manhattan and has been a professional model. The girls easily develop a rapport with her. When Angel’s older brother, Gerald, meets Jalani, he can’t take his eyes off her.
Chapter 4 Summary
By October, when class elections are held, Keisha is voted senior class president. While working on an English class book report at the library, Keisha learns about a heroic woman named Boudica who organized an army and briefly defeated the Romans in Britain. Her research inspires Jalani to find an equally interesting subject to write about. On the way out of the library, the girls encounter Jonathan. He makes his personal interest in Keisha quite clear, but she tells him that she’s focused on her studies.
Chapter 5 Summary
In the fall, Keisha works out with the track team though she doesn’t compete. She explains, “I run to please myself. I run for the freedom it gives me, for the release from memories that stab me in the gut, and for the way it makes my body feel strong and tight” (56). While on the field one day, she witnesses a dispute between Jonathan and a female runner named Rita Bronson, who has apparently fallen in the woods and injured herself.
Later that evening. Rhonda calls Keisha to talk about her dilemma with Tyrone. The two are planning on attending different colleges, and Rhonda wonders if their relationship can withstand the separation, even though they have both admitted that they love each other. During the same phone conversation, Rhonda tells Keisha that she and Tyrone drove Rita home after her accident. Rita says she quit the track team and doesn’t want to talk to anybody about it. Rhonda notices that Rita’s cuts and bruises look more extensive than someone who simply took a fall in the woods. A short while later, Rita leaves school, and her family moves. Keisha notes that nobody knows what became of her.
Chapters 1-5 Analysis
The initial segment of the novel begins with a short passage describing Keisha at her high school graduation. She is about to give a speech to her class and alludes to past tragedies the group has experienced. She also touches a butterfly pendant on her neck and a scar next to it. The reader isn’t yet aware of the significance of either of these objects, but both symbolize Keisha’s growth into adulthood during her final year in high school.
After this cryptic beginning set in the present moment, the story shifts into flashback mode as Keisha recalls the day last April when her boyfriend Andy died. The rest of the novel will cover the period from Andy’s death until graduation day, concluding with the same commencement scene that began the story.
Since Darkness Before Dawn is the third book in the Hazelwood High trilogy, the rest of the initial chapters summarize events that preceded the story’s beginning and tie them into the action that will take place in the final novel. Andy’s death the preceding April during junior year is described from Keisha’s point of view and that of her grieving friends.
After this material is covered, the story quickly skips forward to the beginning of senior year and introduces the characters who will feature most prominently in this part of the trilogy. We find Jonathan brought forward as a potential love interest for Keisha and learn of the mysterious disappearance of track star Rita Bronson shortly after a dispute with Jonathan. The theme of becoming an adult is emphasized both in Rhonda and Tyrone’s discussions about sex and in the implied sexual relationship that Jonathan is seeking to establish with Keisha.
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By Sharon M. Draper
