Anne was not sure that she was going to like Maple Grove, the convent school outside of Boston which her mother had attended when she was a girl. Her mother had always been pretty and jolly and popular, while Anne knew that she was just the opposite: plain-looking, awkward, away in a corner with her nose in a book. When her mother drove away leaving Anne in an unknown world, then she was positive she was not going to like Maple Grove, with its bare rooms, strange girls and severe-looking nuns.

Yet eight months later when her mother, in a letter about returning to Maple Grove the following year writes; "The decision is to be your own!" Anne knows at last that she really wants to return to rooms that now seem homelike, girls who are no longer strangers and the severe-looking but understanding nuns. What happened to bring about this change of heart makes an exciting story. Not awkward now, Anne knows how to dance and play games with skill. No longer plain-looking, her back is straight and her cheeks are rosy. She has found her metier, too, something at which she excels all others in the school. And who would expect a romance to start and a costly jewel to be lost and found in a convent?

These are only a few of the things that happen to Anne during A Year to Grow!