DURING WATER PEACHES

Graduating from a California high school in 1943, La Verne Honeycutt passes up better pay in the cannery for a respectable office job in a government program which imports Mexican braceros to pick fruit as the American workers are off at war. LaVerne, who comes from a no-'count Okie family (realistically, her speech shows it), hopes to start at the University of California in January despite her drunken father's resentment of her ambition; and the hoped-for scholarship award materializes at the end. Meanwhile, LaVerne comes to admire her boss and is concerned when his active sympathy for the Mexican workers gets him in trouble higher up; and she has a bigger problem with a handsome young upper-class Mexican who almost seduces her (only unexpected visitors intervene) though he makes clear that he could never marry ""a girl of her class."" Drab decency is the prevailing note in La Verne's story; its virtues are an unsensational honesty and a real-life portrayal of a time, place, and people that haven't been over-exposed at this level.