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Mary Benton's The Grape Fields on Valley Writers Read

Joe Moore
/
Valley Public Radio

On this edition of Valley Writers Read, we hear a reading of Mary Benton's short story "The Grape Fields." In this Dust Bowl era story, a family of grape pickers assist in the recovery of a kidnapped boy.

Franz Weinschenk, his parents and his older brother Fritz were indeed lucky to get out of Germany just before World War II. For a while they lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., before moving to Madera, CA. He graduated from Madera High and Fresno State. From 1948 to 1952 he taught at Edison High School in Fresno after which he was drafted and served in the US Army for two years.