When I was younger, I had haunted the Carolyn Keene section of books that dominated the children’s area of a bookstore in Ottawa. I had always read ravenously, and living in the country turned the prospect of a city bookstore into a fascinating realm of stretched shelves so full that it would have been impossible to look at each one. Collecting as many novels stamped with her name as I could, I even ventured into the realm of video games to play the HeR Interactive point-and-click mysteries that managed to wrap together iconic plots with timeless historical details.

I also managed to read the stories in a variety of different ways, be it with my mother at night, or in school, where I would tug one of the yellow books out of my desk during class, balancing it delicately on my lap to chance upon reading a few of the pages before being caught. It was a routine obsession that saw me grappling for an opportunity to linger a while longer, reading with one hand while brushing my teeth with the other.

What I had liked about Nancy Drew was that she was stubborn, and she knew what she wanted. Most heroines in that genre were flimsy, trapped in boring domesticated plots that prominently featured male relationships, anchoring them down with exhausting feminine stereotypes.

Thankfully, Carolyn Keene had managed to buck the trend in favor of stubborn girls. Or, should I say, Mildred Benson and Harriet Adams.

Despite the fact that I had read the same books my mother had when she was a child, it never crossed my mind that Keene was awfully determined to keep churning out an obscene number of books over the years. It wasn’t until the summer before my final year of university that I stumbled upon Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her at a used bookstore. I had nearly walked past the table of jumbled up novels, arms tight around my selected haul, when my roommate pulled it free, holding it to me.