A nurse during World War II, Jenny Fields (Glenn Close) conceives with a dying pilot and bears a boy named T.S. Garp (Robin Williams) whom she raises alone. When Garp grows up, he has some success writing fiction, but not nearly so much as his mother has with feminist-themed nonfiction. Rich and famous, she starts a center for troubled women, and while Garp marries and has children, he remains a constant, if somewhat critical, observer of the strange community that forms around Jenny.