Books: Girl Meets Mole

APRIL WAS WHEN IT BEGAN—Barry Benefield—Reynal & Hitchcock ($2.50).

Lula Horgos was a gawky, lonely twelve-year-old who lived in a seedy brownstone front on Manhattan's West Side. Her father, a spiritualist, called her Dik-Dik (after the royal Abyssinian antelope). Neighbor kids called her Spooky Sloppy Lula. One day Dik-Dik saw a solemn, horse-faced young man coming down the street—the answer to a maiden's seance. Lula charged, threw her arms around his waist. "I'm Dik-Dik," she said. The stranger, who hailed from South Brooklyn, had a "heart as clean as a baby's," was the fourth deputy assistant editor in a publishing firm. He...