Tell Me More About: Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson (The original Carolyn Keene)

On May 5, 2025May 5, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading13 Comments

Who was Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson?

Mildred, or as many called her, Millie, wasn’t an amateur detective, but she was the co-creator of one of the most famous teen amateur sleuths in the United States — Nancy Drew.

For 50 years very few people knew that Millie helped create Nancy Drew.

Until 1980, many readers of Nancy Drew didn’t know that Carolyn Keene, the woman listed as the author of the Nancy Drew books, wasn’t actually a real person. She was a pseudonym for some 28 authors, men and women, who create and wrote the stories for the series.

It was a lawsuit between Grosset & Dunlap, the original publisher of the Nancy Drew books and the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the owner/creators of the stories, that brought Millie into the spotlight.

Really, though, Millie had been somewhat in the spotlight before that. She’d written some 130 books in children’s series under her own name from the 30s to the 50s and was an accomplished journalist and world traveler.

What she hadn’t really talked about a lot was her involvement with the Nancy Drew Mystery series.

She’d signed agreements saying she wouldn’t talk about how she’d written 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. She’d written the books with the direction and input of Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate and the brains behind many juvenile series, including multi-million selling series like Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and Rover Boys.

Millie was born Mildred Augustine in 1905 in Iowa, the daughter of a well-known doctor. She wasn’t treated like other girls at the time who were expected to learn how to sew and keep the house.

Instead, Millie was given freedom to explore her own interests and passions. One of those passions was sports. She felt women should have the same opportunities as men to participate and compete in sports she said in an interview with WTGE Public Media in the mid-1990s

“Girls were discouraged from all sorts of athletics,” Millie said. “And I fought that tooth and nail right from the start because I felt that girls should be able to do the same things that boys did.”

While Millie enjoyed sports, such as swimming and diving, she also loved to write, something her mother encouraged her to continue.

Her father, however, said if she wanted to make money, she should do something else and she admits that he was probably right.

She began selling her stories to church papers, but they only paid a few dollars.

She finally sold a story for a whole $2.50.

“That made me a writer,” Millie said in the interview, while laughing. “So, from then on, I was hooked.”

She attended the University of Iowa after school, majoring in journalism and working on the school newspaper. She also worked with George Gallup, the creator of the Gallup Poll.

After graduating, she landed a job at a newspaper, but at the age of 22, she wanted to see what else she could do and traveled to New York City to look for work.

It was there she wrote to Edward Stratemeyer looking for work. Stratemeyer was releasing a book series for juveniles. They were assembly-line type books where he wrote a paragraph detailing what he wanted in the book, including character names and plots. He would send the information he wanted out to writers he knew, and those writers would write the books under the pen name that Stratemeyer controlled and retained the rights to. The writers signed away their rights to credit for the books to Stratemeyer.

While Stratemeyer didn’t have anything for Millie at the time she contacted him, he reached out to her later and asked if she would write a book for the floundering Ruth Fielding series. She did and from there she began to write books for other series for the company. In the midst of all this she also married Asa Wirt in 1928 while attending graduate school.

Millie was reliable, dependable, and a good writer. When Stratemeyer thought about his Hardy Boys series and how young boys liked the boy detectives and then began to wonder if girls would like a girl detective, he turned to Millie.

Stratemeyer had the basic idea of Nancy Drew, but many literary historians and Nancy Drew fans say it is Millie who flushed her out and made her who she became. Millie created a version of Nancy that Stratemeyer’s daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, later toned down and changed.

Millie’s version of Nancy was a lot like Millie. She was athletic, adventurous, bold and brash, and never backed down from a challenge. Harriet’s version made her a bit more “perfect” — a rule follower who was polite but still adventurous and who little girls could look up to.

Nancy was what so many girls in the 1930s weren’t allowed to be.

Young girls could live vicariously through her.

Stratemeyer passed away 12 days after the first Nancy Drew book was released. His daughters took over the business after they couldn’t sell it in the difficult economy. Eventually Harriet began taking more control of the Nancy Drew series. Other ghostwriters were working on the series in addition to Millie, who wrote 23 of the first 30 books in the series. In the 1950s Harriet began to rewrite Millie’s original books, changing Nancy’s character, updating some of the material, and, in many ways, stripping away the personality of Nancy that Millie had created.

Millie was working on her own books at that time and had dealt with the illness and death of her first husband and then being a single mother. It was disappointing to see the changes being made but she had other irons in the fire.

In the early 1950s, she was working for the Toledo Times, remarried to the editor of the paper, and being a mother to Margaret Wirt.

She was also writing a character she felt was even more Nancy Drew than Nancy Drew — Penny Parker in the Penny Parker Mysteries.

Penny didn’t see as much success as Nancy, but she didn’t have the mammoth marketing effort that Nancy had, says Millie.

In 1959 Millie was widowed again and afterward she began to live a life a bit more like Nancy Drew — international travel, adventures, independence, learning more about archaeology and even taking flying lessons and eventually earning several flying lessons.

It wasn’t until 1980 when Harriet decided to move the printing of Stratemeyer books from Grosset & Dunlap to Simon and Schuster that more of the public learned about Millie’s role in creating Nancy.

She told WTGE that she could have pushed for her to get credit for the books she’d written. She could have gotten a lawyer and demanded more of the royalties.

She simply didn’t have the desire to put up a fight, though, she said.

“I wrote because I liked to write and I wanted to produce books that girls would enjoy,” Millie said. “And so I didn’t care too much but it got to be … my friends knew I wrote the books and that was sufficient for me. Eventually though it got to be that Mrs. Adams put out publicity to the fact that she was the author and people were reading that.”

One person who was reading all those stories was Millie’s daughter, who asked her own mother if she’d been lying all those years about writing the Nancy Drew books.

Millie hadn’t shared her role in the books with many but when her own daughter started to doubt her, she began to be more open about sharing her role in the creation of the character.

“I thought if my own daughter doubts my integrity, then it’s time I let the truth be known so when people asked me, I stuck my neck out and I told them the truth, which was that I wrote the books.”

Millie was subpoenaed by Grosset & Dunlap during the 1980 when the publisher sued the Stratemeyer Syndicate to keep them from publishing Nancy Drew with anyone else.

They wanted to prove that Harriet Adams didn’t have the right to say who could and could not publish past Nancy Drew books because she had not actually written them. As part of the case, the records that showed Millie had helped developed the series were also subpoenaed.

The truth was finally out there. Millie was the original Carolyn Keene.

Harriet, however, continued to claim she’d written the books right up until her death in 1982 and because the court records were sealed for years, it wasn’t until 1993 when the University of Iowa held a Nancy Drew conference, that Millie really became known as Carolyn Keene.

The conference at the university attracted the attention of literary scholars, collectors, and fans who wanted to know more about the original author and Millie was the main speaker.

Millie, incidentally, was the first woman to earn a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Iowa in 1927.

More fame than Millie imagined hit her after the conference. In some ways, life continued as normal despite the extra attention. She continued to write news and feature stories and her column for the Toledo newspaper. Nancy fans began to contact her, though, asking about her role and for autographs. She was also inducted into the Ohio and then the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame and her typewriter was enshrined at the Smithsonian.

Millie worked first at the Toledo Times, now defunct, and then at the Toledo Blade right up until the day she died, literally. She was writing her column for the paper, at the age of 96, in the Blade office, when she became ill and was taken to the hospital, where she later passed away.

In the article about her death, the Blade wrote about how her writing impacted young girls and women.

“Her books, Nancy Drew buffs have said, allowed teenage girls and young women to imagine that all things might be possible at a time when females struggled mightily for any sense of equality.”

“Millie’s innovation was to write a teenage character who insisted upon being taken seriously and who by asserting her dignity and autonomy made her the equal of any adult. That allowed little girls to dream what they could be like if they had that much power,” said Ilana Nash, a Nancy Drew authority and doctoral student at Bowling Green State University.

The article continues: “Going to work was a way of life for me and I had no other,” she wrote in a December column upon her pending retirement.

In the column, she explained that her legendary work ethic related to being hired by The Times in her third try during World War II.

“I was told after [the war] ended there would be layoffs, and I would be the first one to go. I took the warning seriously and for years I worked with a shadow over my head, never knowing when the last week would come,” she wrote.

Millie’s column was called, “On the Go With Millie Benson.”

Millie was described in the article about her death as fiercely independent and “always willing to go after a story she was assigned or had set her sights on.”

She almost never took a day off. In fact, the day after she was diagnosed with lung cancer in June, 1997, she was back at her desk working on her next column saying her desk was where she needed to be.

Millie once said in an interview that she never looked back on the books she’d written, “Because the minute I do I’m going into the past, and I never dwell on the past. I think about what I’m doing today and what I’m going to do tomorrow.”

I have had the opportunity to read a couple of books written by Millie, before Harriet got to them, and I have to say I did enjoy them. I didn’t know at the time that other books had been revised, and I had an original copy of Millie’s work, but when I found out, I could see the difference between Millie’s writing and other ghost writers/Harriet.

I am going to be purchasing a couple of books from Millie’s Penny Parker series to see what that series was like as well.

As president of the Nancy Drew Fan Club, Jennifer Fisher is considered a Nancy Drew and Mildred Benson expert. She operates the website nancydrewsleuth.com and donated her Nancy Drew collection several years ago to the Toledo library and now curates items to be added to the collection.

She is currently looking for information on Millie, from letters to manuscripts, to any memorabilia of hers that someone might have.

On her site Jennifer details the life of Millie and talks about the impact her books (130 of them all together, including the Nancy Drew books) made for young women.

She also has a list of all of Millie’s books by series: https://www.nancydrewsleuth.com/mwbworks.html

Jennifer wrote about Millie in a special section on the site, including detailing the trial where Millie spoke about the conflict that eventually arose between her and Harriet Adams.

“On the stand when shown letters between herself and Harriet regarding criticisms and difficulties, she recalled that this was “a beginning conflict in what is Nancy. My Nancy would not be Mrs. Adams’ Nancy. Mrs. Adams was an entirely different person; she was more cultured and more refined. I was probably a rough and tumble newspaper person who had to earn a living, and I was out in the world. That was my type of Nancy.”

And it is that type of Nancy, and that type of woman, who so many women over the years have been drawn to despite the changes. Even with the changes later made to the books, the heart of Nancy, created by Millie, always remained.

Additional resources:

Mildred Wirt Benson works: https://www.nancydrewsleuth.com/mwbworks.html

Mildred Wirt Benson biography on Nancy Drew Sleuth: https://www.nancydrewsleuth.com/mildredwirtbenson.html

Nancy Drew Ghostwriter and Journalist Mildred Wirt Benson Flew Airplanes, Explored Jungles, and Wrote Hundreds of Children Books: https://slate.com/culture/2015/07/nancy-drew-ghostwriter-and-journalist-mildred-wirt-benson-flew-airplanes-explored-jungles-and-wrote-hundreds-of-children-s-books.html

Millie Benson’s Fascinating Story, Author of the Nancy Drew Mysteries | Toledo Stories | Full Film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIs5sRWzEV8

Information on Millie from the University of Iowa: https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/Millie/

Sunday Bookends: Cool bookstores and I finally finished The Two Towers

On May 4, 2025May 4, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends32 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This past week was a long, rough week with some medical challenges for my elderly parents. I’m pretty wiped out but not as wiped out as my mom who is facing an exhausting situation. If you are a person who prays, we could all use some prayers, but especially her.

Yesterday, The Husband, the kids, and I headed an hour south to picturesque Lewisburg, Pa. for a small break and to visit a comic store for free comic book day. We also visited a couple of bookstores, one independent and another a Barnes and Noble built inside of a three-story former hardware store.

The Barnes and Noble is three stories and features an escalator to reach the second level. It is also a merchandise store for Bucknell University, which is a university that is considered Ivy League, but which I learned yesterday is not officially “Ivy League.”

According to various sites, including College Advisor, Bucknell is considered a “hidden ivy” because of its strong academic reputation and its high rankings in various educational programs.

Regardless, it is a well-known college and, from what we’ve witnessed a few times, quite the party college. There was a noisy frat party going on as we visited a playground after visiting the bookstores and having some lunch. Plenty of young women in sun dresses. There were more girls than boys around, so maybe it was a sorority party instead. Hmmm….

Well, anyhow…we enjoyed our visits to the comic book shop and bookstore. The bookstore, called Mondragon, featured a variety of used books and records.

I didn’t find anything I really wanted but I enjoyed looking at the wide variety. I did find one book of recipes by artist Georgia O’Keefe, and Little Miss found a fiction book about horses.

We didn’t buy any books at Barnes & Noble because I wasn’t super impressed with their selection and rarely buy new. It is, however, a very pretty store.

I finally did it this past week! I finally finished The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien. It took me forever, thanks to life events, and reading a couple of other books.

I enjoyed it despite the wordiness, but I will be taking a bit of a break before I start in on The Return of the King, the final installment of the trilogy.

I’ve been reading Grave Pursuits by Elle E. Kay but it deals with a serial killer and that’s been a bit of a heavy topic with all that’s been going on in my life so I’m setting it aside temporarily. I am really enjoying it, and the writing style, though.

Instead, I am continuing All Things Wise And Wonderful by James Herriot, reading a chapter or two at night before bed.

I also started Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns. I like it so far.

And I plan to finish The Hardy Boys: The Twisted Claw by Franklin W. Dixon this week.

The Husband is reading Snow by John Banville.

Little Miss and I are reading Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink.

The Boy is listening to a Warhammer book. I don’t remember which one.

This week I have been watching Murder She Wrote and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Comfort watches.

This week on the blog I shared:

Nancy Drew is 95! History, creation, lasting influence, controversy, and more.

This past week I enjoyed a episode on the True Drew podcast about the 95^th anniversary of Nancy Drew.

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.

Sunday Bookends: My 10-year-old’s opinion of the 1982 Annie, some dirt road traveling, and drop in crafternoons continue

On April 27, 2025April 27, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends12 Comments

The kids helped some friends of the family clean up their yard last week and while they helped, I took a tour on the dirt roads around the property. It was fun to look at the cows grazing on the hillsides, even though they aren’t fully green yet (the hills, not the cows), watch two young does walk in front of me slowly, admire the amazing sky and clouds that day.

I rambled a little bit more about last week in my post yesterday, if you would like to read it.

On Friday, we drove to pick up groceries. In other words, we didn’t do very much last week.

Yesterday, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I held our monthly Drop In Crafternoon with a couple of other bloggers. We will be holding another one tentatively on May 10 at 1 p.m. and definitely on May 24 at 1 p.m.

The crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. There is one woman who creates with beads, another who colors, I sometimes draw or color, and Erin has been embroidering lately. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on. No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.

Our conversations are usually about light things, including books, but somehow I got us on racism, or maybe Liz did, but usually the conversations aren’t super heavy. You will probably meet our cats, children, husbands, and dogs during the drop in so be warned.

If you want to just drop in and say hello If you would like to join us shoot Erin an email at crackercrumblife@gmail.com and she’ll add you to our mailing list.

Uh…nothing

I keep saying I am going to finish The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien the next week, but I am sure I will actually finish it this week.

I have enjoyed it but, oh my, is it long and wordy. I like the wordy at times too, don’t get me wrong, but I just felt like I might never make it to the end. I am only about three chapters away from the end and I do know that it will end on a cliffhanger since each “book” in the series is actually two books of one huge saga of six books altogether so in many ways I still won’t be done. But I will at least be done with this installment.

I am not sure when I will read Return of the King but probably not until fall or winter.

I’ll need a little break from fantasy books for a while I think. I need a few good mysteries and a romance up next, I think.

I didn’t read any of the James Herriot book (All Things Wise and Wonderful) this past week, except for last night, but I will be diving into it again this week.

I also started Grave Pursuits (Pennsylvania Parks Book 1) by Elle E. Kay as something quick to read and I am enjoying it so far. Elle is a writer who lives about 90 minutes from me, and she writes about state parks and towns near me. I am looking forward to one she wrote that takes place in the town I live in. I’m curious to see what she writes about our tiny town. I’ll be digging into that one next.

I’m also reading The Hardy Boys The Twisted Claw.

Little Miss and I are reading Magical Melons (also called Caddie Woodlawn’s Family) by Carol Ryrie Brink, a collection of short stories about Caddie Woodlawn.

Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns

Peg and Rose Solve a Murder by Laurien Berenson

I watched a Hardy Boys from the 1977 show last week and will be writing about it later. I also watched a few episodes of Murder She Wrote from the last season and missed Cabot Cove. She was living in New York City in these episodes.

Little Miss decided she wanted to watch the 1982 version of Annie last night (not sure what inspired this, but maybe a meme she saw making fun of it or something). I told The Husband we were watching it while he was at a work event, and he asked if it was because it was Carol Burnett’s birthday. I said I didn’t know it was her birthday, but it was perfect timing.

When we started it, I realized I must have seen the movie as a kid more than I remembered, because I had it practically memorized. I also realized how old I am because a movie about an orphan hits different now that I am older and think about all those children out there who just want a place to call home.

Another realization was how manipulative that little Annie was. Daddy Warbucks is going to send her back to the orphanage? She adopts a sad look and says, “It’s okay. I’ve already had enough fun just in the short time I’ve been here.” Daddy Warbucks isn’t going to go to the movies with them? “Oh. It’s okay. I don’t need to go to a movie. I’ll just practice my backhand. That girl at the orphanage who said she’d been to a movie once is a liar anyhow.”

Of course, I know that’s not really how they were trying to play her. I’m just having a little fun. In all honesty, I was surprised how nostalgic I was watching the movie.

I couldn’t wait to show Little Miss classic songs like “It’s A Hard Knock Life For Us” and “Little Girls.”

Here were some of her quotes during the movie:

“Why are they dancing? She told them to clean. Hey! You’re supposed to be cleaning! Not practicing your flips!”

“Oh. The little orphan’s got hands!”

“No! Don’t fall for that man! He looks like Professor Quirrell but squared up!”

“No! You can’t marry him! It’s like marrying Jeff Bezos! He pretty much is Jeff Bezos!”

That and when Grace comes out in her yellow dress “oh that dress is beautiful! Slay, girl!”

Watching it and all the great songs (Easy Street with Carol, Tim Curry, and Bernadette Peters for one) was a ton of fun and Little Miss didn’t even make too much fun of it so that was a win!

At the end I asked her what she thought.

“It was kind of a strange movie. We went from, ‘oh these children are sort of being abused, but I guess we’re okay with that.’ To ‘Oh my gosh that guy is chasing her and she’s hanging off this bridge and going to die’ to ‘oh, she has a family now. That’s – uh – cool”

I am making some progress on book four in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. You can find the other three here.

I don’t have a release date yet but I’m having fun pulling ideas together for the story.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Recapping and reviewing the 1977 Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode The Secret of the Whispering Walls

On April 21, 2025April 21, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn nancy drew3 Comments

Here we are to another episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977. As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season they started to join together.

This week we have another Nancy Drew episode, The Secret of the Whispering Walls.

I knew part way into this one that it was based on at least one Nancy Drew book — The Secret of Red Gate Farm, but learned on the Nancy Drew Wiki site that it also combined the story of The Hidden Staircase. I didn’t recognize some of the elements from that book until I read that and then I began to see what parts they pulled from it. I did find it interesting that there is a book with this title from the same era as the Nancy Drew books and ironically it is written by Mildred Benson, who wrote about 30 of the original Nancy Drews under the pseudoym Carolyn Keene.

The book was part of the Penny Parker Mysteries series and I thought it was interesting what was written in the description of the book on Amazon.

“Penny Parker starred in a series of 17 books written by Mildred A. Wirt Benson and published from 1939 through 1947. Penny was a high school sleuth who also occasionally moonlighted as a reporter for her father’s newspaper. Benson favored Penny Parker over all the other books she wrote, including Nancy Drew. “I always thought Penny Parker was a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is,” Mrs. Benson said in 1993.”

You know I’m going to have to get a copy of this one so I can compare.

On to the episode:

We open to someone breaking into a house.

Then we have Ned Nickerson, the assistant of Nancy’s father, attorney Carson Drew for the purpose of the show, pull up outside a house. Nancy’s friend George Fayne hops out of the back seat and says “Super evening, Ned! Thanks for the movie!” She gives a little wave and hops toward the house, which I assumed was hers because Nancy stays in the car.

We see George go into the house and we see the hands of the person rifling through drawers and that person stops as George closes the front door. So, it must be George’s house, right?

But, no, Nancy then follows a few minutes later, walking into the same house. She’s walking toward the stairs when she hears something fall in her father’s office.

My question is — why didn’t she come into the house with George?

In other episodes it has appeared that Ned was just a friend, unlike in the books where he is her boyfriend. Could Nancy have been staying behind for a goodnight kiss? Hmmmm….

I’m guessing maybe so because after George goes in the house we see someone opening the office door enough to peer out and watch her go up the stairs. Then we switch back to Nancy smiling at Ned and Ned smiling back. Nancy gets out of the car and then Ned looks pretty proud of himself about something or maybe it’s more delighted, as he leans back and shifts the car into gear.

Maybe this was a deleted scene to keep the show clear of kissing sessions. *wink* Again I say hmmmmmm.

Whatever the reason, let us move on to the plot.

Nancy catches someone in her father’s office, but the man pushes her down and takes off back into the office and smashes a chair through the window to escape. I’m not sure why he didn’t just rush past her and through the front door, but I guess he has a flare for the dramatics.

Nancy and George are, of course, alarmed and when they hear someone else coming back to the office from the outside, they arm themselves. George is wielding an umbrella that she brings down on what she thinks is the head of the intruder returning, but it is actually the head of Mr. Drew.

Oops. *cue goofy music here*

The next morning Carson Drew is looking through the papers in office to see if anything was taken by the burglar. He thinks things are mostly in order, but then, wait a minute — the papers for the sale of the property and farm owned by Carson’s eccentric aunts are missing. The sale was supposed to be finalized the next day.

This means Carson will need to go to the state capital and obtain new copies of the deeds so he can transfer the property to the aunt’s neighbor. He asks Nancy and George to go to the home of the aunts to explain to them what has happened while he heads to the capital.

He’ll be there in time for the signing of the papers, he assures Nancy.

On the way to the farm, Nancy tells George about the neighbor of the aunts, a grumpy and mean old farmer who used to try to scare Nancy as a child with his tractor. No sooner has she said this than a tractor barrels across the dirt road and forces her car off the road.

It’s the grumpy farmer, Mr. Warner, who tells her to watch where she is going. There is a back and forth about it being the land of Nancy’s great aunts and the farmer saying it will soon be his land and him ignoring Nancy’s requests to pull her car out of the ditch.

Nancy and George have to walk to the farm of the eccentric aunts and when they get there the farmer roars by and says, “I warned those two young women! Just remember, if anything happens to them in this old house, it’s on your conscious, not mine!”

“Oh, it’s just his way of scaring people off with wild stories.”

“Not so wild!” says the one aunt, pointing at the girls menacingly. “I have heard those demons, and I have seen them!”

“Yeah pink elephants, purple spiders, and usually after one of her ‘cough spellings,’” snaps the other aunt.

This comment starts the reoccurring humorous theme of Aunt Lela’s clearly being a functioning alcoholic. She kept taking a “tonic for her heart” but viewers are given the impression that drink in the little cup is a bit stronger than a “tonic”.

What Aunt Lila means by “demons” are voices inside her walls. This was a plot point in the Hidden Staircase when the aunt of Nancy’s friend Helen Corning (who later disappears completely from the series) says there are ghosts in her house.

Inside the house later, the aunts tell Nancy and George that they are excited to move and are going to Las Vegas. The declaration of their planned destination is declared by the aunt who is a drinker.

They also make this announcement in front of a couple who have recently arrived at the farm to help the two aunts run it. To say the couple seems a bit off is an understatement. When Nancy asks the man some questions and then says she gets the impression he cares for her aunts very much, he abruptly stops talking and walks away in a very bad acting moment meant to let us know that there are some secrets brewing at this place and he may know what they are.

Ned and Carson are supposed to be heading out to the farm with paperwork for the aunt’s to sign but they are knocked off the road by a mysterious truck. Carson ends up in the hospital but doesn’t want Nancy to know so she won’t get worried.

It takes a couple of days for Ned to get to Nancy since he’s with Carson and by then Nancy has already discovered that there is a tunnel behind the walls at the aunt’s house that leads to a well on the property of the cranky farmer who wants to buy the land. The well is one of those huge old-fashioned ones that you can crawl out of. One of those you only ever see in the movies or televi— oh, right.

Nancy wants to find out where the voices were coming from since she didn’t find the source when she went through the tunnel. She know she’ll have to go through again to figure it out.

This plot point is different than in The Secret of Red Gate Farm where Nancy discovers a “cult” but that is something you will have to read if you want to know more about that craziness. People in white sheets. Ahem. That’s all I’ll say about that. It is not what you think it is, however.

Warning! I am going to share some spoilers in these next couple of paragraphs. You’ve been warned.

Are your ready?

If you don’t want spoilers you might want to skip this part.

I’m warning you.

Okay. You’ve been warned.

In The Secret of Red Gate Farm the “cult” on the hill is actually a group of people trying to cover up a counterfeit money ring and it is the same in this episode except the strange couple who came to help out the aunts are running the ring and are trying to get them not to sell so they can keep doing it. They have set up their operation in a room under ground at the end of one of the tunnels that leads from the aunt’s house to the neighbor’s well.

The aunts know about the tunnels by the way, but they thought they were all sealed up. They used to be used for smuggling goods in the 1890s the drinker aunt says as she sniffs her “tonic.”

Nancy discovers what the couple is doing through a series of steps, including finding burnt counterfeit money after the couple has burned the trash further up the proptery, a trap door in the barn, and then spying on the couple as they go into the barn. She also decides to take George with her into the tunnels when she hears voices in the walls after the couple has driven a van into the barn.

At the same time Nancy and George head down the cranky neighbor also hears the voices from his well and decides he’s going to find out what is going on. He is certain that Nancy and her dad are trying to find a way to keep him from buying the aunt’s property.

Eventually, the bad guys (the couple) capture the neighbor and tie him up, which Nancy and George see because they are spying from the end of one of the tunnels. They overhear the couple planning to get as much of the fake money out as they can and then blow the tunnel to bury all the evidence. They’re going to bury the neighbor too.

Nancy sneaks in while they are sneaking out and unties the neighbor so they can all get out before the explosion.

Going back a bit here for a funny scene recap — at one point Nancy sends George for help but George gets lost and can’t find the ladder back to the house. She thinks she hears Aunt Lila and the camera cuts to the woman sitting on the couch by the fire drinking her tonic. George yells out to her and the woman thinks that the spirits are yelling at her from the fire. She freaks out and tosses her little cup of booze at the fire around the same time Ned bursts in and hears George yelling, “Call the police!”

Ned doesn’t know where George is but yells back that Mr. Drew already had him call the police. I’m not sure why he had Ned call the police, but help is on the way.

The police end up waiting for the couple in the cranky farmer’s field when they crawl out of the well. Nancy, George, and the neighbor pile out soon after and Nancy tells the police what the couple is doing. They deny any involvement until the dynamite explodes and counterfeit money blows up out of the well and rains down on everyone.

In the end, the neighbor’s wife marches him over to the aunt’s house and he confesses he wanted the property because a big development was going to move in and he wanted all of the proceeds. He tells the aunts that because Nancy and George saved his life he’s not going to buy their property but instead let them sell it the development company and make even more.

The aunts are thrilled because now they will have all the money they need to move to Las Vegas. Aunt Lila is so overcome with excitement that she requests a bit of her tonic. Everyone laughs at the alcoholic old lady as the show draws to a close.

In my opinion, putting aside the weird alcoholic aunt, this episode was well done. There seemed to be a lot more focus on unique camera angles and the acting was better than previous episodes. The camera angles from above and below and around columns made us wonder if someone was following Nancy or not, keeping us on our toes.

I also felt like Pamela Sue Martin toned it down a ton for this episode. She wasn’t quite as abrupt or bossy as she was in the first two episodes. She seemed to soften her portrayal of Nancy down to where it should be if we are going to compare it to the books.

Nancy was bossy and sometimes a bit rude in the books, but not to the point of Pamela’s portrayal in The Mystery of The Diamond Triangle. For this episode the writers added some moments where she appeared more aloof and clueless, but in a humorous way.

For example, at one point George is afraid to sleep in her room because of all the whispering sounds in the walls and instead curls up in the hallway with a blanket. Instead of telling George to come in with her to be safer, Nancy simply tells George that she’s solved one of the mysteries and then says cheerfully, “Well, goodnight, George,” before leaving her in the hallway alone, huddled under the blanket. It was a funny moment showcasing how fixated Nancy can get on a case.

Next up in our feature of discussing episodes from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries I will be offering my impressions of the Hardy Boys episode entitled The Flickering Torch Mystery. I actually watched this episode ahead of what was next up, but I’ll go back to The Disappearing Floor for a later post.

You can read some of my other Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy posts here:

The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Recap: The Mystery of the Diamond Triangle (with spoilers)

Discussing The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Show episode, The Mystery of the Haunted House.

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries Season 1 Episode 2 The Mystery of Pirate’s Cove

Sunday Bookends: He is Risen! And I feel like the books I am reading are very long.

On April 20, 2025April 20, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon9 Comments

First things first – He has risen! He has risen indeed! Happy Easter!

Remember when I was all like, “I need some warmer weather. It’s too cold!”

Well, I thought we’d go into the warmer weather gradually, not one day it’s 35 and I’m wearing a winter coat to a day later it’s almost 80 and humid.

That’s Pennsylvania for you.

I didn’t enjoy the humid weather yesterday, but I did enjoy nicer weather the day before when it allowed me to sit on the front porch and read some while Little Miss drew on the sidewalk with chalk.

I am going to miss my evenings watching Murder She Wrote with a blanket over my lap.

Oh wow. Did I just write that?

I am officially old, aren’t I? Talking about watching Murder She Wrote with my blanket and a cup of tea. *wink*

Oh well. It’s where I am in life and I am okay with that. I’ll just have to watch Murder She Wrote with a glass of lemonade or cold ice water instead.

Today we will have Easter dinner with my parents and maybe watch a movie together.

This doesn’t really go with the rest of this section, but I hit 103 subscribers on my little YouTube Channel yesterday. Whoot!

Guys, gals, blog readers! I feel like I may never finish the two long books I’ve been reading! I know I will and have moved my focus to just one of the books to make it even more likely I actually finish of them this week.

I have been reading both The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien and All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot, switching off between the two depending on my mood, and they are taking forever! They seem so long. I read them on my kindle at night and I swear that I will be reading for an hour, look down at the percentage and realize I’ve barely made a dent in the book!

I finally realized they are both 400-page books, which isn’t really a lot, but can drag a book out when you’re only reading a chapter here and there. Even though they are long books, I am really enjoying them. I am especially enjoying The Two Towers even if it is a bit wordy.

I love the characters and all their different quirks, even if I have gotten a bit lost since we met up with King Theoden and his peeps. Now I am getting too many characters thrown at me, but that’s how fantasy books are so I am just taking it all in stride.

I hope to dig into a book of short stories by Louis L’Amour this week that my husband picked up at the library for me but I have also started a Hardy Boys book and am enjoying that. That, of course, won’t take me long to read since it is only about 200 pages long.

Little Miss and I finished The Littlest Voyageur by Margi Preus this week and really enjoyed it. It was about a squirrel who travels with river voyagers in Canada and learns the hard way that a fur trade is going on. It dealt with the subject of the fur trade in a very cute way and didn’t become as preachy as I thought it was going to. There was a lot of history woven into the book, which on the surface seemed to simply focus on a squirrel and his dream to become a river explorer.

The Boy is reading Warhammer books. I don’t remember which one he is on now.

Last week it was old mystery shows. The Rockford Files with a guest appearance by Tom Selleck early in the week. That episode was hilarious. Then it was Murder She Wrote, including a two parter where Jessica was in Ireland. Those two were very good. I’ve watched some real duds but this was in season 12 so they must have had better writers by then.

Yesterday I watched a 1934 movie called She Had to Choose. It was interesting and had me shouting at the screen a couple of times because I was so stressed at some of the decisions being made. As is with most movies from that era, it was about 60 minutes long.

I also rewatched Paris Blues for the Springtime in Paris feature that Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are doing until the beginning of May.

You can learn more about it here and if you want to jump in you can link up your impressions of the movies at any time at the link on the page. /

I’m working on the fourth book in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. I actually wrote an entire paragraph this week. Ha! I hope to write even more this upcoming week.

If you want to read the other three books in the series you can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lisa-Howeler/author/B07Y3W52FD?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=654deb79-0e34-4d05-94d1-a81a4bd0ca0d

Last week on the blog I shared:

While I wash dishes I listen to a book and right now that book is The Two Towers.

Also, this:

and this:

Photos From Last Week

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: A trip to a used book sale, the same books, more canal journeys

On April 5, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends23 Comments

I want to start by sharing that today is my sister-in-law Kim’s birthday so happy birthday to her. She had a heck of a 2024 and is an overcomer. Looking forward to her having a much better 2025.

I shared a bit yesterday about our week last week, which was fairly uneventful, other than a trip to a used book sale at a library near us. I picked up 19 Hard Boys Mystery books for 50 cents each. That was a fun find. These books, like Nancy Drew, are a bit dated, of course, and written for younger kids but they still have pretty good mysteries. They are also a fun escape from life.

Little Miss also picked out some cozy mysteries for me to try out. She’s picked out a couple duds over the years but also some very good ones so we will see how this bunch works out.

You can read more about our week last week here.

I wish I had something more exciting to report but I am still reading The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murders by Joanne Fluke, The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis, and The Two Towers by Tolkien.

I did finish Whose Body? By Dorothy Sayers last week.

The Husband is reading Big Trouble by Dave Barry.

I’ve still been watching Great Canal Journeys every night. Not much else. The Husband has been watching Shogun.

I watched an episode of Great Canal Journeys when they visited Scotland and I was absolutely blown away by this huge device that lowered their boat from one level of the canal to the larger canal below and two huge steel statues of horse heads they visited during the episode.

I watched Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris as well last week and will be watching How to Steal A Million today or tomorrow.

I’ll also be watching another Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries episode this week so I can write about it on the blog.

Last week on the blog I shared:

A book sale, a trip to a garden center, and what’s up with the turkey vultures in our area?

On the Frontier by Transmissions from the Northern Outpost (I’m biased. This is my brother)

Nadine’s Private Island by Cat’s Wire

Photos from this Week

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot! Come link up with us!

On April 3, 2025April 3, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings5 Comments

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog, and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

Your hosts for the link up:

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.

We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting: This Blonde’s Shopping Bag

Here is what Kellyanne says about her blog:

This Blonde’s Shopping Bag is a personal style blog by Kellyann Rohr. I believe every woman, regardless of age, should have the tools and opportunity to feel their best through fashion. A closet full of great basics with some fun pieces mixed in helps you avoid that dreaded feeling of having nothing to wear! It doesn’t have to break the bank either and that’s why I’ll show you how to get the most bang for your buck. Quite simply my mission is to encourage and support women to stay fashionable, fresh, and relevant!

This Blonde’s Shopping Bag was started in 2016 as a result of my love for shopping and creating outfits. I’ve always loved fashion and finding budget friendly pieces to create looks I love. So many of my friends and co-workers complimented me on my outfits and asked advice but also shared how they could “never pull off” some of my looks or that they “couldn’t afford” to dress the way they really wanted. The blog is my answer to those problems.

Since it’s inception the blog has grown and so has my reach. It’s been a dream come true to connect with a community of like minded women and partner with brands. I’ve especially enjoyed working with Chico’s, Vionics, and Jambu as well as smaller, women owned businesses.

Here are some of my highlights for the week

(Some “grand” photos in this one!)

(A cozy coffee catch up!)

(loved learning about planners here)

(awesome cow print dress!)

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up! Please remember that this is a link-up where you can share posts from the previous week or posts from weeks, months, or even years ago. All we ask is that they be family friendly!

Sunday Bookends: Warmer weather and my socially introverted family

On March 16, 2025March 16, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends20 Comments

I took Little Miss to the little playground in our little town twice this week thanks to higher temperatures. They were high for us anyhow after coming out of a very arctic winter.

The first day it was close to 60 degrees Fahrenheit and the second day it was about 55 degrees. Friday it was over 60 degrees. Yesterday it was about 55 but still sunny and we took another trip to the playground with a friend of Little Miss’s.

Today it is pouring rain, and we are supposed to get some nasty storms.

I do like when it is warmer and sunny but still miss chilly days where I have an excuse to stay home. What I like most about the warmer weather, though, is being able to sit outside and not feel chilled to the bone.

That first day we went to the playground she made me smile by being brave and approaching a little girl she didn’t know and asking her if they could play together. She was nervous to approach the little girl because she said she is used to texting people not talking, which was weird for me to hear but also understandable in this modern age.

Some people think that homeschooled children are shy because they don’t interact with other children. My child does interact with other children through local homeschool activities, library activities, the local 4-H, a Bible program at a church near us, her friends, and Vacation Bible School. She’s still shy.

I attended public school all the way from Kindergarten to twelfth grade. I was shy all the way through and still am.

I know that public school can afford more opportunities to interact with peers but it isn’t always a positive interaction. I was able to interact with my peers and I hated it. I was an introvert through and through. Not a recluse but an introvert. Little Miss has a similar personality. She likes to socialize but when her meter is filled, which sometimes can happen fairly fast, she prefers to go off on her own and participate in quiet activities. My son is the same.

It cracks me up when we come back from an event or a friend goes home and she flops in her chair and says, “Whew! That’s enough social interaction for the week. I need some alone time.”

After she introduced herself to the little girl at the playground earlier this week, and they had played for a bit, she came over to me and said, “She wanted to add me to a group chat on her Messenger Kids (which is a Facebook app monitored by parents) but I’m not ready for that.”

As a GenXer, it is crazy for me to hear that a 10-year-old is being invited to an online group chat by an 8-year-old. We did not exchange contact information with the little girl but if we had I would have had to contact her parents on Facebook, and we would both have to give permission for our children to talk. Then I would have had to be the one to be social with strangers. I was so relieved when Little Miss said she wasn’t ready for that level of interaction. Ha!

Little Miss and I have been attending 4-H cooking classes once a week for the last two weeks. Well, Little Miss has been doing the cooking, and I have been reading a book in the hallway. She really enjoys cooking and has been enjoying attending the class with a little girl who also goes to the church program o.

We attended the first class with my 81-year-old dad who, of course, immediately found someone to talk to while we waited for her. I had been worried he would be bored but he was not at all. He enjoyed talking to a young man there about local history as they looked at a mural on the wall in the building we were at. The Mural is beautiful and showcases history of the small town and county we were/are in.

Dad always seems to find someone to talk to no matter where we go.

I finished The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis last week.

I am reading the biography of James Herriot by his son Jim Wight very slowly because it is rather dull in many parts. I have had to skim a lot of unnecessary information about his time in veterinary school. It truly was unnecessary in my mind, but some readers may enjoy it.

Most of the time this week I have been reading The Case of the Careless Kitten by Erle Stanley Gardner. It’s a Perry Mason mystery and I am really enjoying it. I love Gardner’s style of writing and the banter between Lieutenant Tagg and Perry.

I am slowly reading The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien.

I hope to start Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery this week for Middle Grade March.

After that I will be starting Between the Sound and Sea by Amanda Cox.

The Husband is between books.

The Boy is also between books.

Little Miss is reading Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban.

This week I watched more Edwardian Farm, two episodes of Castle, my farmer on YouTube, and a Booktuber who was designing her reading journal.

I also started an old movie with Cary Grant that I did not enjoy at all, so I am going to be looking for another old movie this week.

I started writing book four of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries last week.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Now it’s Your Turn!

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/

I also have a Substack where I share about my writing journey or books.

Sunday Bookends: Grandma Ruth, Middle Earth, and Middle Grade March

On March 9, 2025 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends18 Comments

I finished Grandma Ruth Doesn’t Go To Funerals by Sharon Mondragon last week and really enjoyed it. I could see this one being a movie. I will write a longer review later but I loved the characters and the story overall.

In case you are curious about it, here is a description:

In a small town where gossip flows like sweet tea, bedridden Mary Ruth McCready reigns supreme, doling out wisdom and meddling in everyone’s business with a fervor that would make a matchmaker blush. When her best friend, Charlotte Harrington, has her world rocked by a scandalous revelation from her dying husband P. B., Mary Ruth kicks into high gear, commandeering the help of her favorite granddaughter, Sarah Elizabeth, in tracking down the truth. Finding clues in funeral condolence cards and decades-old gossip dredged up at the Blue Moon Beauty Emporium, the two stir up trouble faster than you can say “pecan pie.”

And just when things are starting to look up, in waltzes Camilla “Millie” Holtgrew, a blast from P. B.’s past, with a grown son and an outrageous claim to Charlotte’s inheritance. But as Grandma Ruth always says when things get tough, “God is too big.” With him, nothing is impossible–even bringing long-held secrets to light. Grandma Ruth and Sarah just might have to ruffle a whole mess of feathers to do it.

Next up I am continuing The Real James Herriot: A Memoir of My Father by Jim Wight. So far it is very dry and dull so I may toss it aside but I’d love to get to the years where he worked as a vet and some of the behind the scenes stories first. We will see how it goes.

I also started The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, which will be my slow read for the next couple of months. I am loving it so far, even if we lost one of the team on the first page. *sniff*

I started The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis the other night for my Middle Grade March read. I also hope to read Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery for Middle Grade March. Little Miss and I are reading Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson for school, which is a re-read for me.

Once those are done, I hope to start Whose Body? By Dorothy L. Sayers. I’ve never read anything by her so we will see how I like her.

The Husband is on his 25^th book of the year. Sigh. He reads fast but has also had some extra time to read this year so that’s cool for him. Or whatever. *wink*

He is reading Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by Walter Mosley.

I have been watching more historical farming shows this past week and not a ton else. I actually read more than watched things.

This upcoming week I hope to watch more Murder She Wrote and a couple of old movies.

I started writing book four of the Gladwynn Grant series this past week.

On the blog I shared:

Now it’s Your Turn!

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.