Educating Waverley

Story of Waverley Scott's experiences from age 14 to the final stages of her life as an elderly, reclusive romance novelist. At 14, Waverley is unformed and uninformed but not naive; she realizes that she has been sent to Temple School on isolated Isadora Island because she looks too much like her mother's married employer (also Waverley's "guardian"). Traveling with them on almost continuous business trips, she has not attended school or made friends. At Temple School, Waverley is inspired by independent, impractical headmistress Sophia Westervelt and forms a bond with classmates and Sandy Lomax, a local island boy. From these first significant relationships, Waverley forms her opinions on love, romance, and the independence of women. The characters are endearingly human and eccentric; the reader will empathize with their plights as they fulfill their destinies against the background of World War II