An inexperienced female teacher is hired at a private elite school for boys where she raises a few eyebrows among the all-male faculty.

Jan Stewart, a new teacher at The Oaks, a boys' boarding school, becomes instructor and mother-figure to a class of twelve. She must overcome the disapproval of Joe Hargrave, head of the lower school, who has misgivings about Jan's inexperience.—Diana Hamilton <[email protected]>

Jan Stewart, who always dreamed of a fantasy life of glamour and heroism, narrates the story of her outwardly unglamourous and unheroic time as a schoolteacher at The Oaks, a boys boarding school, she its first ever female teacher and it a job in which she has no previous experience. Being just widowed is the reason she was searching for a new life, and while Dr. Avord Barrett, the school's headmaster who hired her for a one year probation trial, knows of her background, she is introduced as "Miss" rather than "Mrs." Stewart. Part of her job is to be housemother to twelve boys, most who already dislike the teachers in general, but dislike her even more for being a woman. Beyond trying to earn the boys' respect, she also has to earn the respect of her fellow teachers. While he encouraged Dr. Barrett to hire a woman to make the school first class as opposed to the second rate institution he currently believes it to be, Joe Hargrave, the head of the lower classes, believes she the wrong woman for the job as her inexperience shows at almost every step. With the twelve under her charge, she may have to prove him wrong to keep her job, the last to arrive, Dick Oliver, the neglected son of wealthy widowed Richard Oliver, Sr., arguably her most difficult student. But she will also have to find the right balance for all twelve boys.—Huggo