GHOST HORSES

An uncomplicated first novel, set in turn-of-the-century South Dakota, about a teenager mad to go fossil-hunting. Despite her Bible-thumping father's sermons on a woman's proper place, Tabitha has managed successful, if surreptitous, rebellion; she can ride and shoot better than her brother and has a good grounding in the sciences. She sneaks off to a lecture by dinosaur hunter Phineas Parker and learns that he plans a nearby dig. He, too, spouts off about women's roles, so she persuades him to hire, sight unseen, her fictional twin ``Tom'' as a scout. Hill contorts the plot to make Tabitha's masquerade easy—her father leaves town as not one but two parties of fossil hunters arrive— and makes it even simpler to tell Good Guys from Bad; Parker is not only sexist, he's lazy, arrogant, flabby, and, as it happens, unethical, while his rival paleontologist, A.V. Harding, is fit, kind, intelligent, and female. When Parker orders a fossil destroyed to throw Harding off the trail, Tabitha unmasks, changes bosses, and declares her independence so vigorously that her previously subservient mother joins her. The story has dramatic moments but struggles beneath the weight of its message; fanatic dinophiles may find more focused books like Kathryn Lasky's Bone Wars (1988) less distracting. (Fiction. 10-13)