The First Lady of DOS Cacahuates

In 1880, free-spirited Frieda Levie quits her job in a San Francisco kosher boardinghouse to join her new husband, Arizona rancher Bennie Goldson, in the fledgling town of Dos Cacahuates (""Two Peanuts"") on the Mexican border. Like The Reformer's Apprentice, the first volume of Rochlin's Desert Dwellers Trilogy, this second installment combines authentic details of Jewish settler life, colorful characters and plenty of pluck from Frieda. She fends off randy patrons at her hotel restaurant, captures a runaway murderer, guiltily cheats once on her frequently absent husband and survives his bankruptcy and a flash flood that destroys their adobe house. Much of the drama turns on obvious personality contrasts--sexually inexperienced (but eventually pregnant) Frieda versus her hot-blooded, rambunctious husband; sensible, calm Frieda versus wild singer/dancer Lollie Friedman, adulterous wife of Frieda's brother-in-law. Rochlin serves up enough period charm, crackling storytelling and priceless details (a Yiddish-speaking sheriff; a Passover seder where tortillas substitute for matzoh) to satisfy devotees of both wild west lore and Jewish history. Editor, John Daniel. (Sept.) FYI: Rochlin's nonfiction Pioneer Jews (Houghton Mifflin, 1984) is in its eighth printing.