13,000 years ago, isolated on the Itabacan Archipelago, the Itabayiti civilization is thriving. With every resource imaginable at their fingertips, they have spent the past thousand years building massive pyramids to observe their ancestors in the night sky, enormous ceremonial courts for festivals and ball games, and towering walls to protect them from the Storm Spirit's wrath. They are a seafaring people with sturdy reed boats that can withstand the most powerful of waves, which they utilize to explore beyond their great wall. And they are a technologically and philosophically advanced people who are beginning to toe the line between spiritualism and empiricism. However, though life goes on and farmers continue to farm, fishermen fish, and unions are made and families combined, wicked forces longing to return to their ancient and feared lost traditions conspire in secret to murder Itabacan's ruler and destabilize the established order. Unluckily for them, two young boys, who constantly seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, appear to thwart their devious plan. Or have they? Add to this a strange object spotted in the night sky, political unrest, and a mysterious figure who seems to confound both Itabayiti spirituality and reasoning, and The Dawn of the Sacred: The Mawoakin Conspiracy becomes more than a mythic genre entry. Matched with its strong emphasis on family, community, and the all-too-familiar growing pains that accompany a young boy’s transition to manhood, Morrison Fuller's debut novel appeals far beyond the expected audience.