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Q. Girl Sleuth’s 384 pages are filled with more than 500 quotes, and biographical and historical information on Edward Stratemeyer, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, Mildred Wirt Benson, the women’s suffrage movement, the publishing industry, and much more. From beginning to end, how long did it take you to write this book? And where did you begin?
A. Altogether the book took me about three years. I started the research in the summer of 2002, when I went out to Iowa City to look at Mildred Benson’s papers at the University of Iowa after first hearing about her. It was there that I got the idea to write about both her and Harriet Adams because she had kept a lot of news clippings about Harriet in among her Nancy Drew files. Once I knew a bit about both of their stories, I knew immediately that I wanted to write about both of them in addition to Nancy Drew—that the Nancy story couldn’t be told without both Harriet and Mildred—and that by doing so, I could expand the book to encompass the story of working women in America. I spent the next few months writing a proposal, which ended up being about 50 pages long, and then after Harcourt bought the book in early 2003, I was off and running.
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Q. What’s your personal interest in Nancy Drew and the women who created her?
A. I read the Nancy Drew books as a child, and I have an older sister who did, too. Our mother read them when she was a girl, and we loved the idea that we were reading something she had read. So I had that immediate sort of sentimental bond to Nancy. I adored her as a kid and thought she was so fierce and intrepid, which was how I wanted to be. As I thought about the character a little bit more at the start of writing Girl Sleuth, I got really fascinated by the idea that so many strong and powerful women—Supreme Court justices and writers and journalists among them—have credited her as being part of the reason for their success.
Q. Since Nancy Drew’s debut in 1930, the series has sold more than 80 million copies and has survived the Depression, World War II, and the MTV age. Why are Americans so fascinated with Nancy Drew?
A. She represents the epitome of intelligence and control over what seem to be uncontrollable situations, and I think that kind of character has endless, timeless appeal. In Nancy’s case, she has it all, but she doesn’t send the message that you have to rebel to be extraordinary—she’s not threatening or dangerous. She has her freedom and an interesting life, but she doesn’t have to face up to really adult challenges like marriage and a career and she’s still a nice girl. She has plenty of money and her father adores her, and while it’s sad that she has no mother, what little girl hasn’t secretly wished at some point that there was no one around to nag her about cleaning her room and about what she’s wearing? And of course Nancy has Ned. He’s a great boyfriend, but he never gets in the way of any schemes, picnics, adventures, or road trips. That’s especially appealing, I think. There are tons of examples of him trying to get Nancy to take his commitment more seriously, all of which she laughs off—charmingly, of course. That was one of Harriet’s hard-and-fast rules about Nancy—that she would never even consider anything more serious with Ned. At one point Harriet literally wrote her staff a memo that said “Marrying off ND disastrous.”
Q. Besides devoted Nancy Drew fans, who’s your audience for this book?
A. Anyone interested in children’s literature—I trace its history over the last century in the book—and certainly anyone who wants to learn more about American women and their progress. I think anyone who knows a woman they admire—a mother, aunt, sister, or friend—will find a lot in this book that tells them why they do. It’s also a book for all women, I think, regardless of whether or not they read Nancy Drew as children. Harriet and Mildred were such fascinating people, and seeing them make their way through the times in which they lived is really inspirational.
Q. Over the years, Nancy Drew’s style has reflected the times—“From prim 1940s pleated chic through the sporty ’60s and on into the earthy ’70s, Nancy has always been in vogue while on the case.” And as illustrated in Girl Sleuth, from her inception until the early eighties, Nancy’s morals and traits mimicked the ideals of her early authors, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Mildred Wirt Benson. As Benson “later confessed, she [Nancy Drew] was everything her author—or any girl, in fact—wanted to be, and then some.” Who does Nancy Drew portray in this new millennium?
A. I think she still embodies the ideals that made her so popular when she first appeared on the scene. She’s smart, unrelenting, and honorable, but, as one of the first books in the series says, she’s serious without taking herself too seriously. She never lets anyone stand in her way, but she’s still popular and a lot of fun, and I think that’s just the kind of role model we can all still use. Even in this era of girl power, I think there are too few examples of female characters who get what they want by using their brains and their talents.
Q. What was the most challenging aspect of writing this century-spanning biography?
A. I think figuring out the balance of how much larger context to include in the book. I knew there needed to be sections on women’s history and the development of children’s book publishing both before and after the Second World War, but I didn’t want Nancy, Harriet, and Mildred’s stories to be overwhelmed by these aspects of the book. A century, especially one as eventful as the twentieth century, is an enormous chunk of time to get through, and I wanted to make sure the book moved along without getting bogged down. Luckily, Mildred and Harriet were directly involved in many of the huge changes that took place, so I was able to use their personal stories to illuminate a lot of the big sweeps of history in an intimate way, which I hope puts them on a more human level and makes them more compelling.
Q. You’re a poet and a critic, published in the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, the Nation, and the New Yorker, among others. And, in fact, Girl Sleuth is your first book. Was the transition from poet and critic to biographer difficult?
A. I had never written anything even close to this long before, so that was the main challenge for me—figuring out how the process was different from putting together a magazine article that’s a much more contained piece of writing with much stricter boundaries. In many ways, it was very gratifying to just sit down and write without worrying about length, and to be able to explore various sidelines that would never fit into something shorter. The research was also much more in depth, although not that different in terms of what kinds of things needed to be done—interviews, reading, archival work. I really enjoyed being able to spend months sifting through the Stratemeyer Syndicate archive at the New York Public Library. As far as poetry goes, I don’t think there’s any kind of writing that works the same way as writing a poem—not even writing fiction—so I’d say I pretty much just turned off that part of my brain for the duration of writing the book. I think writing a biography is an inherently interesting project for anyone who’s at all interested in the human condition and the way we all live our lives—which is most people, I guess!
Q. Do you have plans for another book? Maybe about the Hardy Boys?
A. I do have plans for more books. I hope to spend the rest of my life writing them. Right now I’m working on finishing a book of poems, which I had to set aside to write Girl Sleuth. After that, I want to write another nonfiction book. I have a few biography ideas and a few other ideas, too. None of them have to do with the Hardy Boys or mysteries so far, but you never know… I certainly learned a lot about how to write a good mystery over the course of writing Girl Sleuth, and I wouldn’t be all that surprised if I suddenly found myself writing one someday. After all, I’ve been trained by Harriet and Mildred, who knew more than most people about what keeps readers coming back for more, a very good goal for any kind of writer.
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