The Power of Nancy Drew

Literature adds to reality; it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

—C S Lewis

Growing up in Sherwood Park, a sleepy enclave in Yonkers where nothing exciting ever happened, I was captivated by the adventures of Nancy Drew. Captivated, too, by the number of orphans I found walking the pages of the Drews.

In The Secret of the Old Clock, for instance, when Nancy rescues a child who has fallen into a river, I discovered that the child was being raised by two elderly aunts. Doesn’t she have a mother? This was electrifying; I read on to hear that Nancy’s own mother had died and she was being raised by her father and Hannah Gruen, their housekeeper. A few chapters later, Nancy met Grace and Allison Cooper, two sisters were running a small farm by themselves, as both of their parents had died.

This was a revelation, an eye-opener. Until that moment, all the children I knew had mothers. I thought I was the only one without a mother. Although my mother had died, no one had told me. I thought she was ‘missing.’ Lost. My first day of kindergarten, an aunt had taken me to school. There were some forms to fill out and, at one point, the teacher suggested I ‘let go of mommy’s hand’ and play with the girls over in the dolls’ corner.

Mommy’s hand? I didn’t know what to say, what to do. If the teacher found out that this was my aunt and not my mother, would she let me stay? I was terrified. My head felt as if I was swimming underwater. To steady myself, I held onto the edge the wooden desk, and with cheeks burning, I studied my shoes.

If I was a child with lots of unanswered questions, Nancy was a young girl with all the answers. There was nothing she couldn’t do or didn’t understand. She was as independent, intelligent, and adventurous, as she was kind and caring. Her good deeds and adventures engaged the mind, opened the heart.

I wanted to be as brave as she was, wanted to solve mysteries and help others recover missing wills and prized possessions. Most of all I wanted to live in River Heights and have a father like Carson Drew who sat and talked to his daughter about the cases she was working on and offered her advice.

Nancy made all things seem possible. To paraphrase C S Lewis, she irrigated the desert of my mind. With Nancy, I could go anywhere in the world in a few hours.

Years later, I would enjoy a private practice as a reading teacher—administering psychoeducational tests and remediating the impediments to reading. My students, 90% of them young boys, were not grieving the loss of loved ones, but they were stunned and stymied that, unlike classmates, they were not reading on grade level. The class dummy.

Sadly, Nancy Drew was not a good fit for this group. Initially, as we worked to break the phonics code, they’d dictate stories I’d turn into ‘books.’ Books they would illustrate and proudly read aloud. In a sense, they became authors before they became readers. And in time, there were books in rhyme from Dr. Seuss; books that stretched the imagination from Roald Dahl.

All of which became for them a source of wonder. As were the children, as I watched them discover the joy of reading. Or, in the words of C S Lewis, as I watched them acquire “one of the competencies that daily life requires.”

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Tags: featured, inspiration, memoir, nancy drew, women writers

Category: Contemporary Women Writers, On Writing