Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
by Melanie Rehak
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Book Summary Information
Author: Melanie RehakEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-05
ISBN: 015603056X
Number of pages: 384
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
Book Review: Scholarly, but also a good read
Summary: 5 Stars
Girl Sleuth is that rarity: a scholarly and informative book that is also delightfully entertaining. While the story of Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and her publishing syndicate that produced one of the most beloved characters in American young-adult literature, amateur detective Nancy Drew, has been told before, surely it can never have been recounted in such fascinating detail and in such fluent, readable prose.
Author Rehak begins her book by warning that "this is a mystery story, " and indeed several mysteries are explored and unraveled as the book progresses. The most important of these is: how did a woman in the 1930s manage to become a successful CEO of her own business? As Rehak tells it, it wasn't easy. Harriet Stratemeyer (later Adams) and her sister Edna took over their father Edward Stratemeyer's successful publishing business upon his death in 1930. He had already created several classic children's book series, including the Rover Boys and the Bobbsey Twins, hitting upon the scheme of coming up with plot outlines and editing the books while farming out the actual writing to a team of specially trained ghostwriters. It was this formula that Harriet and Edna were to carry on after his death, but surely they could not have foreseen the breakout success of one of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's characters, red-haired, blue-eyed, roadster-driving Nancy Drew, daughter of a successful District Attorney in River Heights, USA. (Among Rehak's more entertaining tidbits is that Edward Stratemeyer had originally named her Stella Strong.)
The obstacles that Adams faced, not the least of which was juggling the demands of running a business and her own household, would be daunting even today; that she faced and largely overcame them in an era where women were still regarded as usurpers in the work world testifies to an almost unbelievable drive and determination. Rehak acknowledges her exceptional qualities without whitewashing her mistakes and less defensible acts, including her treatment of the one author responsible for more than twenty of the Nancy Drew books, Mildred Wirt Benson, as equally unusual and independent a woman as the Stratemeyer sisters, and a successful journalist and author in her own right. It is perhaps understandable, though not excusable, that in later life Harriet Adams tried to downplay Benson's role in the mega-success of the Drew books, to the extent of denying her authorship and projecting the impression that Adams was their sole author and creator.
Through the three hundred-odd pages of Girl Sleuth Rehak chronicles the ups and downs of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, dovetailing its history neatly with the changing role of women in American society and business, through World War II, the Vietnam era and the Women's Liberation movement. Her narrative indeed has the drive, economy and precision of a good detective story. Girl Sleuth manages to incorporate feminist studies, a business history and a chronicle of American pop culture into one compact, readable volume. Bravo!
Summary of Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
A plucky “titian-haired? sleuth solved her first mystery in 1930. Eighty million books later, Nancy Drew has survived the Depression, World War II, and the sixties (when she was taken up with a vengeance by women?s libbers) to enter the pantheon of American girlhood. As beloved by girls today as she was by their grandmothers, Nancy Drew has both inspired and reflected the changes in her readers? lives. Here, in a narrative with all the vivid energy and page-turning pace of Nancy?s adventures, Melanie Rehak solves an enduring literary mystery: Who created Nancy Drew? And how did she go from pulp heroine to icon?
The brainchild of children?s book mogul Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy was brought to life by two women: Mildred Wirt Benson, a pioneering journalist from Iowa, and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, a well-bred wife and mother who took over as CEO after her father died. In this century-spanning story, Rehak traces their roles—and Nancy?s—in forging the modern American woman.
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