Her father is a prosperous businessman who has recently moved his family from a poorer, ethnically Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx to Manhattan's Upper West Side.

That summer, Marsha persuades Marjorie to accompany her on an excursion to South Wind, an exclusive resort with a staff of professional entertainers.

Noel tells Marjorie that she is a "Shirley": a typical, well-brought-up New York Jewish girl who will want a stable husband and family while he is embarking on an artistic career.

However, en route to France, Marjorie meets a mysterious man named Mike Eden aboard the Queen Mary.

He tells her that in his year in Paris he has not enrolled in school to study philosophy and that he will return to the U.S. to take another stable writing job.

The novel concludes with an epilogue in the form of an entry in the diary of Wally Wronken, the only character who did manage to have a successful artistic career.

Wally idolized Marjorie as a young man, and he meets her again 15 years after she marries when she has happily settled into a role as a religious suburban wife and mother.

New York Times reviewer William H. Hudson enjoyed the novel and observed that "a reaffirmation of traditional values, a submission to wisdom of the older generation and of authority and a reacceptance of individual responsibility" was a cornerstone of most of Wouk's fiction and a reflection of the author's acceptance of traditional religious Judaism.

[8] With time these criticisms have abated, and two extracts from Marjorie Morningstar have been included in a reader titled The Rise of American Jewish Literature.