BITTER HERBS AND HONEY

What future is there for a strictly brought up Jewish girl, about to graduate from high school in 1916? Becky Levitsky (Rifka to her mother) rejects both the place that's waiting in her father's store and sober Henry Braude, whom Mama keeps inviting to dinner. But it's clear that college, a distant possibility at first, will triumph over her interest in gentile Peter van Ruysdaal and indeed the flirtation soon ends in a flurry of parental disapproval and mutual embarrassment. Becky doesn't stand out from the legions of other spirited girls in comparable situations, though Cohen's haimish portrait of a close-knit, observant family is a sympathetic framework.