Marcella has stumbled into puberty. She's grown too old to play with toys but is still too young for boys. Songs, Christianity, and curiosity at her changing body fill her time. She practices the piano, talks to her God and, alone in her bedroom, she explores. "At first she didn't allow it very often, only once every two or three nights, but gradually she let herself...oh, every night, after she'd said her prayers." Then she finds out there's a name for what she does, that it's a bad thing to do, and that God prohibits it, even though it feels so delightful... Marcella is the candid and unrestrained story of a school girl and her emotions, of the war of an innocent morality with a grown-up sexuality, plus all the bewilderment of dread, inexperience, and shame she experiences as she battles her way into womanhood.