BIG SUGAR: Seasons in the Canefields of Florida <i> by Alec Wilkinson (Alfred A. Knopf: $18.95; 256 pp.) </i>

”. . . Wilkinson has written a book that, while superficially modest, is both disturbing and profound. His is the America just out of sight from the highway, a place in which interest and indifference connive to permit the intolerable to persist.”