Janice Bryan

When a dead newborn is found, wrapped in bloody sheets, in the bedroom wastebasket of a young novice, psychiatrist Martha Livingston is called in to determine if the seemingly innocent novice, who knows nothing of sex or birth, is competent enough to stand trial for the murder of the baby.

The recently widowed Jo March Behr continues to run the school she and her late husband founded, a school for boys called "Plumfield."