Marcella Colby is thirteen; she lives in Kansas, and her country is at war with Germany and Japan. But other wars go on closer to Kansas Marcella's war with her mother and father, and her war with her own body. For Marcella discovers her body and the pleasure it can give her, but then she discovers that what she is doing and cannot stop doing is a very great sin against God, whom she loves very much-but not so much as the things she does at night...