After receiving a call from her friend Helen Corning, Nancy agrees to help solve a baffling mystery. Helen’s Aunt Rosemary has been living with her mother at the old family mansion, and they have noticed many strange things. They have heard music, thumps, and creaking noises at night, and seen eerie shadows on the walls. Could the house be haunted? Just as soon as she hangs up the phone, a strange man visits Nancy’s house to warn her and her father that they are in danger because of a case he is working on buying property for a railroad company. This warning leads Nancy and her father Carson to search for the missing Willie Wharton, a landowner, who can prove he signed away his land to the railroad and save the railroad from a lawsuit. Will Nancy be able to find the missing landowner and discover how these mysteries are related?

At least that’s the description for the book my friend got. As she finished ahead of me, I scrambled to find one on hoopla since my library didn’t have any physical copies. Turns out I got the original 1930s edition while she got the 50s-80s edit, and wow, there are lots of changes between them.

The basic issue of Rosemary and Floretta’s mansion being haunted stays the same as well as Nathan Gombert’s attempts to get them to sell and his anger at Carson Drew for drawing up the negotiations. Otherwise, lots of things changed.

For instance in mine, Nathan is cranky old man, a koot. In my friend’s he’s a middle-aged lawyer. Mine, he lives in the house next door to Rosemary/Floretta. In hers, that house is abandoned and Nancy has to ask the real estate developer for the keys to get in. Mine she just sneaks in at night through the window.

Hers, Floretta and Rosemary are a great-grandmother and granddaughter. Mine, they are spinster sisters. Hers, there is a second person Willie Wharton who is living in the abandoned house, and is given money by Nathan to pretend to haunt it. Mine, no Willie, Nathan does all the stealing and haunting.

Most tellingly, in my version, Nathan has an unnamed negress servant who speaks in a stereotypical racist “Massa” way who helps to tie up Carson Drew and defend the house against the police. This ties into the backstory that Nathan was a distant cousin of Rosemary and Floretta, whose great grandfather was on the Confederate side in the Civil War while theirs was on the Union, leading to a family rift and bitterness on his part.

None of that existed in my friend’s edition where Nathan pays Willie to help him kidnap Carson and haunt the place, and has two other men who help to do the job. Presumably, there are no black people in general.

Even Carson Drew’s kidnapping is different where mine Nathan catches Carson at the train station and lures him to his house by saying Nancy was hurt. Presumably they changed that to a straight up kidnapping in my friend’s version to make Carson look less of an idiot. I mean, why would he believe the word of a guy who openly threatening him and get in a car with him?

And while he’s kidnapped, mine had a bigger emphasis that Nathan needed Carson to sign a contract to sever his previous draft that would somehow give the mansion to Nathan (idk how real estate works), and would starve him to death to do it. In my friend’s, it’s Rosemary and Floretta who need to sign and Carson is just drugged out the entire time.

Also mine has a lot more canaries to scare Floretta and Rosemary. Hers had none.

Obviously, the unnamed negress was excised because it was racist, and to make Carson less stupid, but we couldn’t figure out why they made so many other changes. Like why change the relative angle? I suspect they added the real estate developer to my friend’s edition in order to make Nancy “breaking in” legally acceptable since she asked for a key. I don’t know about the drugging vs starvation, maybe they thought the threat of slow death was too much for kids?

I did learn in my children’s lit class that the publisher who took over the Nancy Drew series in the 50s did republish the books to make Nancy less independent and conservative, and mine did feature Nancy being more willing to bend the law.

My friend was just fascinated that in both versions she seemed so independent that Carson trusted her daughter to go out doing whatever she wanted all day, and the small town was so friendly that everyone just gave each other their addresses and such.

Which again, relates to history that the concept of “teenagers” didn’t begin until the 50s so the 30s when these were originally written Nancy would have been considered an adult with the trust and responsibilities of one.

It was very interesting that we unintentionally ended up with a story with diverging details, but I think it made for a better discussion.
As for our movie of the month, it was Little Women (1994). The first time my friend had ever seen it, and not much to add there. It didn’t deviate too far from the books, although we did bemoan that Winona Ryder’s choice was the old German professor and not Batman ie. Christian Bale.

I mean, if you’re going to have her turn down Laurie, couldn’t you lessen the blow by making Baher not an old man?

Also spent an inordinate amount of time wondering how they had limes in mid 19th century New England. Oranges were considered exotic back then because they mainly grew in Florida and California. How are limes native to New England?

Next up is The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, and an attempt to catch up on our movie lists with Scooby Doo Mystery Inc, and My Babysitter’s a Vampire.