A fifteen year old girl enters a convent during the mid-nineteen fifties, when nuns still wear traditional habits and are physically and emotionally removed from the rest of the world. Subjected to rigid programming that includes almost perpetual silence and nearly total social isolation from her fellow community members, the young nun believes that God has called her and stays there for nineteen years. She eventually finds liberation and clarity through an unexpected sexual awakening with another woman. The manner in which she resolves the conflict this causes between her spiritual and human needs leads her to a new future.