TOUCHMARK

With her quick tongue and ready wit, Nabby never fails to get what she wants. Her ambition is to learn the pewterer's craft, and undaunted by anyone's notion of a gift's proper place she backs into an apprenticeship, starting as an indentured servant gift and making herself indispensable in the workroom. Nabby also does her bit for the Sons of Liberty, a cause that catches her imagination the night she sneaks out to watch her Master Butler take part in the Boston Tea Party. In fact, it is Nabby who diverts the attention of the British soldiers and enables Paul Revere to row across the bay on the first leg of his big mission. Nabby's enthusiasm for pewter is catching and the daily business of Boston tradespeople and patriots is as carefully laid forth as the lore of pewter designs and touchmarks. But a heroine who surmounts obstacles so easily never really gives us a chance to forge a bond of sympathy and one can't help feeling that Nabby is a surrogate for her contemporary sisters. Nimble historical entertainment, but a female Johnny Tremain it isn't.