Elena of the Stars

In this sleek, melodramatic fiction, Rosenthal (Loop's Progress) conjures the patently pre-adolescent fantasy of establishing rapport with a seemingly untamable horse. And not just any horse: the steed that 13-year-old Elena befriends is a golden stallion. Elena herself is the fearless child every girl wants to be--though raised in the city, she's a natural-born rider, and when she visits her widowed grandfather in Wyoming, she and the stallion hit it off. If this sounds like the stuff of teen melodrama, Rosenthal does little to discourage that appraisal. He portrays Elena not only as graceful on horseback but also as a crack shot with a rifle and a fearless fighter whose moves can bring down a grown man. A facile Freudian connection is established between girl and horse, and indeed the stallion, fatherlike, saves her life on two occasions, including by trampling to death a thug who is about to shoot her. Grandiloquent phrasings abound: ``She dreamed that if she could not be a stallion, then she could be married to one, not a man, not a metaphor... but the horse itself, and not as a mare, but as a woman.'' Though this book is sure to earn comparison to Nicholas Evans's The Horse Whisperer, there are simply too many unlikely or overblown details here to appeal to most adults; despite some graphic violence, this novel may best suit a YA readership. (Sept.)