A Letter To The Woman They Would Not Name:

When I was learning about you, they told me that you climbed several mountains in your career. One-hundred-and-thrity-five books later, It wouldn’t be until your last decades that they finally called you by name. They said “You scaled heights that hadn’t been reached before. You were a woman who overtook mountains.” But when I was standing in front of your glass-cased typewriter, looking at the worn keys your fingers touched to trailblaze a path: for yourself, for me, and for women like us everywhere: I knew that description was all wrong. You didn’t climb the mountain: you became it.

Let’s talk about you. Your becoming started in the state of Iowa as the youngest sibling of two. The year was 1919 and you were surrounded by women in floor-length plaid skirts who are told what they’re always told: the greatest thing you can do with your life is marry a man: a rich one at that. You were only thirteen and you wanted to do more. So you sold your first short story: The Courtsey. Even at the age of thirteen, you knew in order to become the artist you were destined to be you needed a way out. From The Courtsey forward you wrote short stories to put yourself through college. And while it was nearly impossible to build a portfolio when female writers had to write under psuedonyms, you paid for your entire education using only the tips of your fingers. Your early-wed friends expressed their concerns for your financial stability. And as the first woman and person to ever graduate from the journalism program: you set out to prove that for a lifetime they’d eat their words and read yours.

In the late 1920’s you were offered your dream career: a novelist. The problems with novelists in your day were great. In order to be a published woman, you were to sign away all of your rights in exchange for a flat fee and work under a pseudonym. As if that wasn’t enough: you weren’t allowed to outline your own stories. The publishing head would script out an outline and you were to fill the skeleton with body. While this was anything but the creative liberty you deserved, you went with it. Your publisher fought you tooth and nail on the stories you created at first. The women were “much too flip” as they said. But, by some grace, The Nancy Drew Series was first published on April 30th, 1930.

This would be the first chapter book series that sparked my interest in reading and life. In a rural Texas elementary school in the early 2000’s, we met on the pages of The Hidden Staircase for the first time. The narrative I discovered in your voice at an impressionable age is one that has stuck with me for a lifetime. You created worlds for me to live in where women were the heroines. It wouldn’t be until later that I found out your characters had been softened to be more palatable female: an action you fought relentlessly. Yet your narrative lived on, fearlessness was synonymous with femininity. And at the end of your life and the beginning of mine: you taught me that women are not meant for the “namby-pamby” as you said. We’re meant for life’s greatest adventures. We’re meant for the mountains.

When I visited your typewriter in Chicago seventeen years after your passing and twenty-one years into my life, I had written you a letter. I wrote it at a typewriter next to yours. On those pages, I recalled the great adventure that you made your life into: from earning a commercial pilot’s license to canoeing Central American Mayan Ruins. I told you about how I’ve always known my purpose to write. I was creating my first work and becoming acquainted with the word no. For many years, I’d been told stories were not a first-class option for creating my dream life adventure. But, that’s not what you said. A woman who was told she would be the first writer to be fired. We talked about this in the letter and more. I signed it as yours truly with a postscript that said just one thing: “pass the torch.”

In April 2021 at age twenty-three, my first mystery novel was traditionally published. Since then, I’ve met with many naysayers who have criticized the unconventional nature of the women in my work. But yesterday, I packed up my apartment to go on my next great life adventure. One that I’ve dreamed for awhile. With a pen in my hand, I’ll take the light you’ve passed on to the mountain ranges, where I’ll build my own summit right next to the one named: Mildred Benson.