Edna Ferber was an early 20th century American author and playwright. Ferber worked for several newspapers. She covered the 1920 Republican and Democratic national conventions for the United Press Association. Her novels often featured a strong female protagonist and often had a secondary character who faced some form of discrimination. In 1925 her novel So Big won a Pulitzer Prize. Dawn O'Hara, the Girl Who Laughed was Edna Ferber's first novel. Dawn was a newspaperwoman working in New York. When she gets ill she must return to Michigan. Dawn had spent years caring for her mentally ill husband. She had lived in boarding houses and all of this had exhausted her. She was only 28, but often felt like an old woman. The care of her sister Norah and her family along with the attentions of the handsome German doctor, Ernst Von Gerhard, slowly bring Dawn back to life.