To disappear is different than to be destroyed. It is to remain forever alive but frozen in limbo. This has been the fate of Amelia Earhart. At the moment she vanished she was regarded as the world's foremost aviatrix. It was not just skill that had given her the heady heights of fame she enjoyed. She was charismatic and courageous. She exemplified progress and daring, and she became an irrepressible example of the budding unstoppable womanhood. Challenging the dangers of flight, this scrawny, androgynous yet charming tomboy typified courage rising over adversity.

At the climax of her career, she decided to tackle the world-a flight approximating the circumference of this planet, a flight never undertaken before by man or woman. Over its most harrowing expanse-the vast Pacific-she vanished. The circumstances were such there was room to doubt she simply crashed at sea. This has opened a door to many theories about her ultimate fate.

A Pacific island radio operator picked up a garbled message indicating Earhart had survived ditched on an island. Native Marshallese declared a white woman flier had been picked up and taken away by the Japanese. Natives on Saipan said a white woman had been brought ashore by their Japanese occupiers, fate thereafter unknown.

These and other clues have come together to instill the instinctive feeling that Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan survived. Yet why were they not repatriated to the United States? Every theory conceived since 1937 has tried to explain this. In themselves these theories have become their own reality. Often only thinly connected to the facts, they have become Earhart's unintended legacy.

It is time for a biography of Earhart's disappearance rather than yet another biography of the famed aviatrix. In this volume, the focus is on that final dawn she vanished and what has come about since then. Then Came the Dawn is a critical look at the theories and, insofar as it bears on them, the career of Amelia Earhart.

Aside from his strange name, Gian J. Quasar stands out for his detailed investigation of popular topics and cold cases. Among the distinctions his books have achieved is inspiring a Resolution in Congress and several TV documentaries.