In The Girl With A Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier draws readers into Dutch society, its artistic culture and the household of artist Johannes Vermeer.

In Remarkable Creatures, Chevalier takes the readers to Lyme Regis, an English coastal town, its beaches and cliffs scattered with buried dinosaur fossils.

The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of an actual person, Mary Anning, a 19th Century fossil hunter, whose discoveries are still on display in the natural museums in London and Paris.

Mary, a child from a working class family, was uneducated and barely able to read and write. She spent her time hunting for fossils or curiosities (she called them “curries”) to sell to tourists and to gentlemen hobbyists.

On the beach, she meets Elizabeth Philpot, who is also an avid fossil hunter. Elizabeth is a 25 year old, well-educated spinster from a middle class London family. Due to financial difficulties, she and her two sisters have been forced to relocate to Lyme Regis, which Elizabeth describes as "the remote, shabby watering hole on the southwest coast of England."

Mary and Elizabeth's friendship is unusual, the poor young girl and the older woman of class with a sharp tongue, but their mutual interest in fossil hunting draws them together.

And when Mary finds "monster" 18 feet long skeletons of extinct marine reptiles (their scientific names being ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus), Elizabeth comes to Mary's aid to defend her against men who want to take credit for Mary's discoveries. Being a woman of lower class and outside of the scientific community, Mary was ripe for exploitation, but Elizabeth was determined that Mary receive the recognition she deserved as a talented paleontologist.

Gender inequality and class status are consistent themes throughout the novel.

And although the author transports her readers along the beach searching for "curries" with Elizabeth and Mary, this novel is not all about digging up old bones. There is also romance. A rift occurs between the two girls when a handsome gentleman comes searching for treasures.

Remarkable Creatures is the story of 19th century fossil hunters, their discoveries and their contributions to learning more about prehistoric life and the history of the earth. In addition, it is a celebration of female friendship.