When sixteen year old April enters the California tuberculosis hospital she knows she has little chance to live. Her doctors say so, her boyfriend won't visit for fear of the deadly disease, and she can hardly walk without coughing so hard she chokes. The only good news is that Dad is out of the Army after four years in Europe and will visit every day so they can "become acquainted" again. It is June 1945 and WW2 is ending. Desperate as her prognosis is, April is relieved to crawl into bed in a hospital where others are like her instead of afraid of her.

Within a week she meets Dr. Shipman, who is determined to cure her, Florence, a nurse who hates her, and Dad gets an embossed letter from Prince Ravi, the son of a Maharajah. Prince Ravi wants to visit her with "a view to marriage if they should prove compatible." Her roommate Nancie, beautiful as a movie star, laughs and says when Ravi first came he brought a servant who cooked meals in his room until the doctor threw him out. Dad agrees to a "literary friendship", all it can be since she is confined to bed and only sees Ravi once a week when they are weighed and x-rayed. Still, he sends roses twice a week and gives her a parakeet who carries poetic letters from his room to hers.

Then Irving, the Irishman next door, dies horribly. Nancie needs an operation but refuses because her fiance doesn't want her scarred. April starts hemorrhaging blood. Things are looking grim when Ravi gets half an hour exercise. He visits every afternoon. They fall in love. Dad comes after work and talks about what they'll do when she's well. Ravi sneaks back after lights out and says she must decide to get well and do it. April knows he's right.

Nancie discovers her fiance has secretly married. She screams uncontrollably and exhausts herself. Breaking the rules, April gets out of bed to comfort her and Florence, her nurse enemy, tells Dr. Shipman. He accuses April of trying to kill herself. Nancie turns her face to the wall and goes downhill rapidly. She regrets not h~ving the surgery to collapse her lung but it's too late. The night Nancie dies, after the squeaking gurney takes away her body, the doctor finds April asleep in Nancie's bed.

Her new room-mate Rena, married and a doctor, says firmly that she and April will get well. In a mirror, April inadvertently watches Rena making love with her husband. April fiercely wants to live and love as they do. When Dr. Shipman says she needs the lung collapsing surgery, Dad is dubious but Ravi says the scar will be "the beautiful crescent moon of her courage," and Rena says, "do it!"

April's surgery is successful. Two months later she and Ravi walk to a nearbye college, meeting students she dares to hope may be classmates soon. A month later the Maharajah comes from India to take Ravi, now cured, home. He has arranged a marriage for him with "a beautiful girl from Lampur" whom he has never yet "had the honor to meet. "April feels betrayed but Dad helps her see she didn't intend to "settle down" in India and that Ravi's love has helped her get well. Arriving home, she finds red roses from Ravi.