In the opening pages of FIRST DAWN, readers meet Jarena Harban, who, along with her family, is taking the adventure of a lifetime. A few years after the end of the Civil War, life in Georgetown, Kentucky wasn't easy but was familiar to the Harban family. As a former slave turned sharecropper, Ezekiel Harban meets William R. Hill and purchases a plot of land in Kansas. The simple purchase changes everything for this family. Ezekiel and his three daughters --- Jarena, Grace and Truth --- pack their belongings and move to the town of Nicodemus, Kansas.