Somerset 1805.
Anne, the very young second daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, baronet of Kellynch Hall, befriends Edward Wentworth, a young curate in the nearby Monkfort village. What unites them are charity commitment and similar familiar circumstances. Mr Wentworth lives in the loneliness left by his late parents and beloved distant siblings; Miss Anne lives grieving the loss of her beloved mother and the indifference of her father and sisters.
Regardless of their diversity of rank, 18-year-old aristocrat Anne is increasingly curious about the members of the bourgeois Wentworth family; all of them, except Edward, are linked to the Royal Navy.
Edward becomes fond of her as a younger sister, and it is in Anne's kindness that he finds comfort in his concern for the fate of his seafarer siblings involved in the major battles against Napoleonic France. As well as seeking advice regarding a particular gift to give to his younger brother: Frederick, lieutenant, and enfant prodige of the Royal Navy, as daring as passionate about literature.
When the young naval officer is forced to a shore leave at his brother's, he finally meets the young lady who suggested his favourite gift. Seeing her amongst the Elliots, he feels like he is watching the darkest night being enlightened by the brightest warmth he has ever seen and falls under the spell of her sweet temper.
Also the girl's life is upset by the arrival of Frederick, a newly promoted and promising commander waiting for a commission; he is much more fascinating than Anne could have imagined and inexplicably drawn to her.
Suddenly, Anne and Frederick will find themselves experiencing a love very similar to that described in their beloved poetry and novels. A reciprocated love, overwhelming just like a youthful love can be; a strong bond between two similar but, at the same time, different souls. Too different for someone like Sir Walter who values no other quality than birth and rank, and too different for Lady Russell, Anne's godmother, adamant about not letting her goddaughter risk wasting her life with an unknown Navy officer on the verge to leave and fight a war.
After three months of love, illusions, disappointed hopes and dramatic encounters, Anne and Frederick have become two different people: she is forced into wisdom and deprived of vivacity, he is deprived of his warm smile and hardened by disappointment; both deprived of love and happiness, headed towards eight years of loneliness and pain.

A sweet and dramatic journey into the beginning of one of the most beautiful love stories ever. A prequel of "Complementary, a Jane Austen's Persuasion variation", "Dawn after Dark" narrates the circumstances that led to the meeting and separation between Anne and Frederick, passing through the birth and awareness of a love that is youthful but so deep as to survive time, distance, and pain. A way to understand the reasons for the constancy and profundity which Frederick will write about, eight and a half years later.
Until they meet again in "Complementary" and start their life together in "Complementary vol.2"