Plot Summary
Annie John, the protagonist of the book, starts out as a young girl who worships her mother. She follows her everywhere, and is shocked and hurt when she learns that she must some day live in a different house from her mother. While her mother tries to teach her to become a lady, Annie is sent to a new school where she must prove herself intellectually and make new friends. She quickly falls in with an emotionally close crowd of girlfriends, but later is attracted to a wild girl who climbs trees like a boy, and whom Annie John calls "Red Girl".
Annie John becomes closer to her friends at school and Red Girl, while alienating herself from her mother and the other adults in her life. It later becomes clear that she also suffers from some kind of mental depression, which distances her from both her family and her friends. The book ends on a symbolic note, in which she physically distances herself away from all that she knew and loved by leaving home for nursing school in England.
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