Expect Worm Every Apple

When she wasn't pumping gas at the service stationher home in Sonoma, Calif.Wallem was working on her first book, a memoir begun at the age of 78. Her disarming naturalism makes the reader eager to follow her adventures as an only child, growing up in various places dictated by her father's ""moving fever.'' Both parents fostered her love of literature and the arts. Wallem's most vivid stories recall adventures when she was 10 in 1918, when the family settled in a cabin neighbors helped her father build on acreage he bought in Oklahoma. There are accounts of school and social activities and innocent first love, among other attractions in this unusual re-creation of bygone America. (April 13)