PURELY ROSIE PEARL

Rosie Pearl and her family are migrant farm workers during the Depression. In the camp where they are staying for the strawberry harvest, she makes a new friend but is harassed by the hateful job boss and worried by her older sister's difficult pregnancy. One thing the boss says hurts more than anything else: that she and her family haven't ``got backbone enough to be nuthin' but migrants.'' Rosie worries that it's true, but is determined to make more of herself one day. Cochrane's auspicious first novel has a spunky heroine in Rosie Pearl. Tough, hardworking, responsible, yet still a child, she is utterly engaging in the most difficult of situations. The lives of migrant workers remain in the background; beyond details necessary to the plot, readers won't come away with a sense of the harsh realities such work entailed. Nonetheless, Cochrane demonstrates ease and confidence that elude many more experienced authors. (Fiction. 9-12)