In the late 1940s, Connecticut teenager Philippa "Flip" Hunter is sent to boarding school in Switzerland after recovering from a knee injury sustained in an automobile accident that also killed her mother.

Upon arrival at the school, Flip happens to meet a local boy named Paul Laurens, in whom she confides some of her unhappiness with Eunice and with being separated from her father.

She misses her father and her home, is still mourning her mother, performs poorly at school athletics due to her knee injury, and does not easily make friends with her sophisticated classmates, many of whom also come from dysfunctional family backgrounds.

After a hazing ritual in which Flip is physically abused by the other girls and then left blindfolded, gagged and tied to a tree in the woods, she is rescued by the art teacher, Madame Perceval.

Flip learns that Paul is a war orphan who was rescued by Madame Perceval's brother-in-law and that he has lost his memory of his past due to trauma he suffered in a concentration camp.

Flip's happiness at seeing her father, on top of winning the cup and being in a romantic relationship with Paul, is further enhanced when romance blooms between Philip Hunter and Madame Perceval.

[3] Philippa "Flip" Hunter's story also closely parallels that of young pianist Katherine Forrester in L'Engle's 1945 novel The Small Rain.