BRJSpring26Web - Flipbook - Page 24
Mysterious t ewksbury
J.A. LISA INC.
Wayne J.A. Lisa
Stone Mason/Mason Contractor
908-507-4965
waynejalisa@aol.com
Adams came to an end in the early 1950s, when the syndicate
ended their reliance on ghost writers and Benson stopped receiving assignments. Like her father, Harriet Adams retained influence
over the syndicate9s characters, providing plots and detailed chapter outlines for every story and in a sense Carolyn Keene always
wrote with two pens. But without Mildred Wirt Benson, Nancy
traded a bit of her brash edge for a softer image and ended the
decade like James Bond and Sherlock Holmes in a Betty Crocker
world; conforming to feminine expectations of the era, while continuing to push the boundaries of female heroes in young adult
fiction. Sophisticated, fashionable, attractive, intelligent, athletic,
and coolly self-assured; Nancy could now handle a pistol, a motor
boat, or her roadster as smoothly as she could handle a sewing
needle, a gourmet cookbook, or a winning bridge hand.
Nancy9s fictional balancing act of overachieving super-sleuth
and domestic maven may have been an expression of Adams9 reality as a CEO and full-time mother. Her daughter, Camilla Witman, remembered that besides being an
