Plot summary

In 1930s Salzburg, Maria is a novice at a convent, she always having thought about being a nun growing up on the hills above town and being able to see above the convent walls to the goings-on inside when she was a child. The sisters, including the Mother Abbess, however openly muse about Maria's fitness as a nun, they not questioning her faith but rather her temperament, as she always seems to be getting into one form of trouble or another. As such, the Mother Abbess feels it best, against Maria's wishes, for her to leave the convent if only temporarily to see if distance will provide some clarity for all of them, Mother able to secure her a position as governess for wealthy widowed Navy Captain Georg Von Trapp's seven children, age range from sixteen year old Liesl to five year old Gretl. It is a difficult transition for Maria working under the extremely regimented mentality of the Captain who treats his children and her like they were in the military, especially since the passing of their mother, to dealing with the disruptive children who have gone through many governesses in they not wanting a governess but rather love from a present father and a mother. As Maria is able to soften the workings of the household, first with the children and then the Captain, the latter may see what the children need, namely a mother, he having chosen wealthy Vienna-based Baroness Elsa Schraeder. What he is unaware of is that while she wants to be Mrs. Captain Von Trapp and live the life of gaiety and wealth, the Baroness has no want to be a mother to the seven children. Complicating matters are, in no particular order, the Nazi takeover of Austria, the Captain ultra-Nationalistic who has no intention of working within the Nazi regime, and Maria and the Captain falling in love with each other, neither wanting to admit so both because of the Baroness and Maria's long and singular course of being a nun.—Huggo