Those of you who have read The Great Topeka Adventure, Part 1 or The Great Topeka Adventure, Part 2, might remember that Madison Weatherby, the girl who was really an undercover secret agent, addressed all her letters to the CIA to a Ms. Cherry Ames—so that, if they were ever intercepted, a rival spy might think she was just writing a friend from Wisconsin. That name was stolen from this series, and even though it’s more of a girl’s series, I thought I’d check it out for the benefit of you female readers out there. Much to my disappointment (though maybe girls will appreciate it), the book does get rather girly sometimes—much more so than the Nancy Drew series. However, it’s actually a pretty good story, well-written, with some neat intrigue built in.
First, though, the boyfriends! Well, there’s Wade Cooper, the dashing young pilot for Federal Airlines, whose one of Cherry’s steady dates—along with Dr. Lex Upham, the young physician who dates Cherry when Wade’s not around—or even when he is, as will so awkwardly be the case in Chapter 2—and then of course, there’s Harry Jenner, the handsome young candidate for mayor, but he doesn’t really factor into the story until later, so let’s forget him for now—I really must interject a public service announcement here, and encourage you young ladies that if you’re ever thinking of going out with a guy, go with one at a time, and don’t have a rotation in place. Cherry Ames might get away with it, but this doesn't go so well in real life!
Anyway, the plot. Cherry, having just wrapped up a week off which she gets to spend at her apartment in Greenwich Village along with several of the other nurses she went to nursing school with, takes a position as Dr. Clem Brown’s assistant in Sleepyside, New York. No, not Sleepy Hollow—though she will go see that on one of her dates (with Lex, if you were wondering who)—same day they go see Hyde Park (where Franklin Delano Roosevelt once lived), Harmon “where trains going north from New York change from electric engines to steam” (this book was written in 1955, but Harmon is still the end of electricity on its route), the Can Cortlandt Manor. At another point in the book, Cherry and Lex will visit Sing Sing, the famous prison—but just as tourists—anyway, that gives you a pretty good idea of where the fictional town of Sleepyside is supposed to be located.
But back to Dr. Brown—he needs an assistant because his regular nurse, Lola, is going on vacation for a week—Lola has worked for Dr. Brown for years, and all the patients in the small town have grown used to her—which will give Cherry some trouble as the unfamiliar nurse tries to win their confidence. Upon arriving in Sleepyside, Cherry is taken to The Manor, a massive old house that now serves as the town’s boarding house, run by the bitter old Marcia Charlton, descendant of one of the town’s oldest families, who has strict rules which must be followed at all times at the house. A sampling? No keys are permitted. The house closes at eleven o’clock PM for the night, and no one will be allowed in after that time. Meals are never to be served inside the mansion. Sounds quite inviting, doesn’t it? The place gives Cherry the creeps the first night she stays there, though after she has a little argument with Miss Charlton about the food rule (which has no exceptions, even if someone falls seriously ill), she hears sobbing coming from a room below and wonders if Miss Charlton’s bitterness is an act? There’s also some kind of feud between Miss Charlton and Dr. Brown—even though they’re probably the best-respected persons in the town, they never speak to each other—not even if they’re in the same room!
On the way up to Sleepyside, though, Lex explains to Cherry that trouble is brewing in the town—as a result of the election coming up. Cy Hillman, who’s been mayor for over 20 years, is the favorite to win, but he faces stiff competition from young Harry Jenner, a young lawyer who’s determined to get the town to build a new school and also redo the tenements, which he claims have fallen into a sad state of disrepair—Hillman argues that the tenements are in perfectly fine condition, and Jenner simply wants to rebuild them because he’s got a secret deal with a big, influential contractor worked out. Of course, Cherry isn’t sure right away who to believe—but once she meets Hillman, she gets the sense that his cheerful, positive demeanor masks a man with a violent temper—a side most people don’t seem to know about.
Her first day on the job, though, she meets Jenner—a man who agrees that Mayor Hillman’s not as pure as the townspeople believe him to be, though his grief is a little more personal—he nearly got run over by the mayor’s “reckless” driving. There are no witnesses, but Hillman does have a very real scratch on his head that Cherry treats—the two become friends, and Cherry learns from Jenner that the tenements are in really bad shape, though Jenner can’t seem to get anybody to go visit and take a look for themselves. The reason for this, he believes, is that Hillman controls the finances for the tenements, and he’s been directing the money from them into some mysterious endeavor—though nobody knows what, as Hillman doesn’t lead a lavish lifestyle or seem to have that much of a fortune.
Of course, Cherry knows you can’t just take a politician’s word for something, but the next twenty-four hours bring her over to Harry’s side. First, Mayor Hillman comes in for a routine checkup that evening—he impatiently interrupts one of Dr. Brown’s appointments by calling him on the Intercom—then lets Cherry take the blame for breaking the rules. This doesn’t serve to put him on Cherry’s good side, and when Tommy Regan, one of the local paper boys, comes in with a scratched up knee and complains he got run off the road by Hillman, Cherry’s loyalties swing completely over to Jenner—that, and something else Tommy has to say later that evening. Harry and Cherry are convinced that there’s some secret in the mayor’s past which explains the diverted funds from the tenements, and they go to a local warehouse which houses the town’s old newspapers to see if they can find out anything helpful—they get an exciting lead, but before they can follow it up, Hillman pays a visit to the warehouse—and though they can’t prove it, Harry and Cherry expect that he’s destroyed any information that might compromise his secret past. Somehow, they must find out what his secret is before Election Day, or it could be too late for Harry!
That’s all you need to know about the story right now, but if you read a lot, even if this is your first Cherry Ames book, you might recognize the name Julie Tatham. She’s perhaps best known for having written the first six books of the Trixie Belden Series, and she also wrote books in other series—the Ginny Gordon Series and the Vicki Barr Series. Some of these were published under the name Julie Campbell, but both these were her real names—she was born Julie Campbell but married Charles Tatham, Jr., in 1933. So, unlike a lot of the Grosset and Dunlap books, this title was indeed written by Julie Tatham! Interestingly enough, Tatham split the series with Helen Wells, but not in the way that you’d think. You see, Wells wrote the first seven books of the series, and Tatham took over on Book 8, writing all the way through Book 16 (this would be her last Ames book). After this one, though, Wells returned to writing the series and contributed eleven more titles. All were published under the actual name of the author, and having only read this one thus far, I can’t say who was better—you’ll have to read some more yourself to find out!
No comments:
Post a Comment