Book page numbering bug in Pages

Traditional Novel template for a Word Processing document: I want Page 1 to be where the text starts, after the page-numberless Title, Copyright, Contents, and Dedication pages, and then a blank page, but I can't get the Pages program to allow it. I've tried everything, including starting all over with a new copy of the template. I've tried various combinations of Page Break, Section Break, and kluges to make it work, but the program soon gets weird: the three-column footer field collapses to one field, and if I put a number in it, the same number appears on a previous page as well, giving me two Page 1s! The numbering mechanism is bizarre: when I need to designate a page as Page 1, Page Numbering in Document/Section is greyed out; and choices for "Section starts..." don't include "This Page." It's pretty unintuitive. I think it's buggy.