author
Dell H. Munger
b. 1862
A little-known Midwestern novelist, she wrote a single prairie story that follows a determined farm girl through hardship, marriage, and the search for independence. Her work draws on rural experience and gives frontier life a strong, personal voice.
1 Audiobook
The Wind Before the Dawn
by Dell H. Munger
About the author
Born near Chicago on December 15, 1862, Dell H. Munger was educated in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, and also spent some time at Omaha Medical College. Nebraska Authors records that her life stretched from the Midwest to California, where she died in Los Angeles on October 22, 1937.
Munger is known for one novel, The Wind Before the Dawn, published by Doubleday, Page & Company in 1912. Nebraska Authors says the book drew on her experiences growing up on farms in the Midwest, while Project Gutenberg describes it as a prairie novel centered on a young girl facing poverty, family duty, and the hope of a better life.
Though her published output appears to have been small, her novel has endured through later reprints and digital editions, and it remains the work for which she is remembered. A Stanford archives entry also shows Dell H. Munger in correspondence from the 1910s and early 1920s, hinting at a wider literary life beyond her single surviving book.