Kate Fansler, professor of literature, is lured out of her sabbatical by a desperate appeal from her alma matter, the Theban School, one of New York's finest girls' schools, to conduct a seminar on Antigone. The Greek heroine's bold and defiant stance seems to have uncanny relevance for a generation caught up in sex, drugs, and protest. But literary allusions assume sinister shape when Kate is drawn into the strange activities surrounding the discovery of a dead body in the old school building.