False Dawn

False Dawn is a 1978 novel by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. The first chapter of the novel was published as "False Dawn" in Strange Bedfellows edited by Thomas N. Scortia (1973).

False Dawn takes place in a near future. No single great holocaust has happened but the world (or North America, anyway) has swiftly declined and is now sparsely populated, badly polluted, over-run with bands of rapists and thugs, and mutations are commonplace. The female protagonist is a mutant, and a very capable woman, who joins forces with a man in what may be a futile attempt to find a refuge. This is a remarkably grim world but an engrossing read, nonetheless.