Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband. She is asexual, a trait condemned by her family and disapproved of by society. She encounters a dying ball turret gunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp who was reduced to a perpetually priapic mental vegetable by pieces of shrapnel that pierced his head. Jenny has intercourse with the bedridden, uncomprehending, dying Technical Sergeant Garp to impregnate herself, and names the resultant son after him ( T. S. standing only for Technical Sergeant ). Jenny raises young Garp alone, taking a position at a boys' school. After Garp graduates, she suddenly becomes a feminist icon after publishing a best-selling autobiography called A Sexual Suspect (referring to the general assessment of her as a woman who does not care to bind herself to a man, and who chooses to raise a child on her own).