Childsong — Barbara Wood

Seventeen-year-old Mary McFarland is pregnant -- or so the doctors say. Her parents are outraged and assume it is the fault of her boyfriend, Mike. But Mike knows this is impossible -- and assumes Mary has done with another boy what she has refused to do with him. Mary denies that she is pregnant, but is unable to explain the obvious signs in her body.

It is the early 1960s, when the worst social disgrace for a woman is to become pregnant out of wedlock. Mary, a good Catholic high school girl, suddenly finds herself at the center of a scandal, rejected and ostracized by family, friends, and priest. At first she doesn't accept what the doctors are saying -- there is no way it can be true. She insists that something else is wrong with her, but no one will believe her or try to help.

Then one person, a physician, begins to wonder if Mary's claim to innocence could possibly be justified, and he begins to investigate. The scientific theory he develops of the cause of her pregnancy is so bizarre, such a medical oddity, that he knows the McFarland family, the Church -- and the world -- will very likely refuse to accept it. But if he is right -- what kind of child is Mary carrying?