When I was 11, I discovered Nancy Drew and fell in love with the plucky girl sleuth. I'd ride my bike to the library and bring home batches of books each week in my plastic woven bike basket. Sometimes if I emerged with a really big haul, I'd cram them into the basket and put the overflow in a brown grocery bag, that I carried with one hand while steering with the other. 

One afternoon I rode home with nine books. I read all evening (I was a flashlight-under-the-covers girl) and in the morning I feigned illness because I just had to finish the book. That day, I read three books, lounging in bed most of the day and eating hot buttered toast when I got hungry. For three days I faked it. My mom, who must have had her suspicions, caught on by the third day when I was still too sick for school but had to visit the library to replenish my book stash. 

Nancy was SuperGirl to me. She was smart, pretty, independent, loyal, fearless, but most of all, she was so clever at finding the clues and sussing out the mystery. Her DNA is embedded in everything that I write. 

As an adult, I read "Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her" by Melanie Rehak and was struck by how Nancy's fictional escapades had helped save a girl's life. I forget the details in Melanie's wonderful book but I think the girl had been kidnapped and stuck in the trunk of a car. This resourceful girl managed to jimmy the lock and escape. When the media asked how she'd come up with such a clever idea, she replied, and I paraphrase: I asked myself, what would Nancy Drew have done? 

I don't consciously ask myself that question as I write my own strong female characters, but I know that Nancy's adventures are firmly wedged in my subconscious, and that her cool, calm, dependable style has influenced my characters in ways both great and small, across a divide of more than 60 years. Nancy Drew rocks.