The Secret of Shadow Ranch

Welcome to another Nancy Drew Challenge and I have a surprise for you today!  I mentioned before that the first 34 books in the series were revised in the 1960s, and I had all the revised editions and didn't think I would ever get to read the original versions.  Wellllll thanks to some sleuthing on eBay and (oddly) Etsy, I am now the proud owner of several of the original text versions!  Numbers 1-4 and 6 were never released with picture covers and I haven't tracked down the original text versions of those, but I just got The Secret at Shadow Ranch last week and immediately read it and then went back and reread my revised copy too.

We have different cover art and a slightly different title happening here; left is the original text (OT) and right is the revised text (RT), which I will probably always think of as the original since it's the one I read as a child.  So now I get to review two case files *and* compare and contrast the two versions and I may go into book nerd nirvana.  And I may (totally will) talk a lot because I'm so excited.  But you don't have to read it, I'm writing this for my own pleasure.  If you're just here for the cards, scroll on down.

Original case file:  The book opens with Nancy's buddies Bess and George (she's a girl) asking her to accompany them to Arizona with their aunt to check out a ranch that the aunt and uncle have received as payment for some sort of debt (um, how do I get someone to give me a horse ranch, I want one).  Dad Carson gives the okay for Nancy to spend the summer in Arizona because he wants to go fishing in Canada, so the girls, Aunt Nell, and another cousin named Alice hop on a train and head for the Southwest.  Alice is sad because her father disappeared years ago so the other girls try to cheer her up, as if anything they do can help with abandonment issues.  Upon arrival, they discover that Shadow Ranch is pretty rundown, but the girls happily settle in to doing things like trail riding in the mountains and helping with a cattle roundup while Aunt Nell does nebulous business things to get the ranch ready to sell.  During the course of their many wanderings around the ranch and surrounding mountains, they meet Martha Frank, a mean old woman who has a child with her that doesn't seem to be related to her, so Nancy's investigative instinct is piqued.  Nancy keeps going back to Martha's cabin despite Martha obviously wanting her nowhere near there and rifles through a trunk of items to find fancy clothes and a doll which lead her to believe the child was kidnapped.  So she sends a telegram to dear old Dad to look into possible kidnapping cases in Philadelphia and then forcibly removes the girl from Martha's cabin upon seeing Martha abuse her.  But it's all okay in the end because Dad telegrams back that there was a child kidnapped from Philadelphia and Nancy finds a ring with the child's initials on it so the girl has to be the same child.  In another huge coincidence, one of the men they met in town near Shadow Ranch was suffering from amnesia and turns out to be Alice's long-lost dad (he got whacked in the head by Martha's brother when he saw them with the kidnapped girl in Philadelphia, finally someone who does get brain damage from a blow to the head), and they decide to adopt the kidnapped girl whose parents had both died in the meantime.  Five stars.

Notes:  This is the very first original text Nancy Drew I have ever read, and it's a trip.  My copy of this book has a copyright date of 1931 but it doesn't say what year it was printed; regardless, the book is in fantastic shape and has that wonderful vintage book smell.  Love it.  There's only one illustration at the front (my later Drews have periodic illustrations) but it's more detailed than in the later books.  The beginning of the book goes to more trouble to give the personalities of Nancy, Bess, and George, and there's a discussion of why George has a boy's name (the family just really wanted a boy).  Then there's an ongoing bit with the ranch foreman, also named George, who refuses to call girl George by her first name until the very end of the book.  The mysteries in this book didn't really get off the ground until at least halfway through the book; we get a lot of Nancy and her friends practicing their riding skills and going on trail rides and having adventures like getting lost overnight.  They spend weeks just haring off on their own with a pistol Aunt Nell gave to Nancy for protection, and Nancy actually shoots and kills a mountain lion and a rattlesnake!  Really the only detective work is Nancy snooping in Martha Frank's cabin and then asking her dad to look into stuff in Philadelphia.  Still, it's fun to read something written in the 1930s and read about things like Pullman cars on the train and how Aunt Nell doesn't like it when George uses slang like "Oh, man!"  I know I'm clutching my metaphorical pearls at that verbal outburst.

Here's my card for The Secret at Shadow Ranch (OT):

You'll see in a minute that this card is the same as the RT card in different colors.  I made the RT card first and since the covers both feature rearing horses, I decided to do the same design.

Interestingly this book never specifies what color Nancy's horse is and the artist painted her on a bay, but the RT version says she rides a bay and then has a black horse on the cover.  I love the vivid colors on this one where the RT version is darker and moodier.  I didn't have Berry Burst rhinestones, so I used a Stampin' Blend marker to color clear ones for my card.

Let's move on to the revised text version, The Secret of Shadow Ranch:

Revised case file:  This is Nancy's first mystery out of the immediate area of River Heights *and* it's the debut mystery for cousins Bess and George!  Nancy flies to Arizona to vacay with her previously unmentioned besties and also investigate the appearance of a glowing phantom horse and incidents of sabotage at the titular Shadow Ranch, which belongs to Bess and George's uncle Ed.  I think that Nancy Drew and Scooby-Doo must inhabit the same universe, because a glowing phantom horse is straight out of a Scooby-Doo episode, but I digress (that's not a criticism, I love Scooby-Doo too).  The girls don't even make it to the ranch before they fall victim to sabotage themselves--their vehicle overheats and they have to wait for rescue from the ranch.  Once there, Nancy immediately goes into investigation mode and learns that the famous outlaw Dirk Valentine was rumored to have hidden a treasure on Shadow Ranch before he was done in by the local sheriff; perhaps someone is looking for the treasure and sabotaging the ranch to get rid of Uncle Ed et al.  She discovers a suspicious cabin up on Shadow Mountain and goes on numerous trail rides (because of course she's a horsewoman too), and in the end of course she figures out where Valentine's treasure is.  She, Bess, and George are briefly caught by the bad guys but are quickly rescued by the sheriff and his posse because Nancy was able to signal her allies with a fire up on a cliff.  And as a side quest she helps Bess and George's other cousin Alice find her missing father, because one mystery wasn't enough for this outing.

Notes:  Bess and George, yay!  They are Nancy's main sleuthing companions for most of the books in the series.  Okay, so their characterization over the entire series is not deep (Bess is the not-so-courageous one who's always trying to lose five pounds, George is the athletic one who's more than happy to accompany Nancy into danger and is also mean to poor Bess about trying to lose that weight, that has not aged well) but that goes for pretty much everyone in these books.  I remember this one being one of my favorites as a kid and that's because I was a horse-crazy youngster and this is Nancy's first (but not last) adventure to feature horses.  One funny thing is that Ned, Nancy's longtime boyfriend and sometime minion, gets mentioned briefly when Nancy doesn't even meet him until book 7; that one must have slipped past the editors when the books were rewritten in the 60s.  While chasing the phantom horse, Nancy gets knocked off her own horse and lands so hard she blacks out, so that's at least two blunt force traumas to the head for her so far in the series.  Also, the RT version incorporates one Native American character and the presence of Native American cliff dwellings near the ranch, so that is a nice addition.  Five stars.

Consulting detectives:  Being five chapters longer, the OT version takes its time getting everyone out to Shadow Ranch, whereas the RT begins with Nancy's arrival in Arizona.  The aunt and uncle are renamed from Nell and Dick to Elizabeth (Bet) and Ed, so now Bess must be named after her aunt Bet.  In the OT version, Uncle Dick is talked about but doesn't come into the story until the very end to identify his long-lost brother-in-law (whom Nell had never met), whereas in the RT version, Uncle Ed is there for the whole book and has a more active role.  We trade out the kidnapped girl plot for the Dirk Valentine one and that is the best cowboy outlaw name ever, way to go on that one, though the OT had Zany Shaw which is pretty awesome too.  It's fun to see how the mysterious cabin in the mountains was reused in the RT since Martha is gone, and we still have the missing dad story though it plays out a bit differently; missing dad was kidnapped six months ago in the RT rather than having soap opera amnesia for years in the OT version.  In the OT mystery resolution, Nancy unilaterally decides to let Martha and her brother go without contacting authorities about the kidnapping; in the RT she contacts the sheriff more than once who then arrests all the bad guys at the end which I think is a better plan.  I think these are both great in different ways so I don't have a favorite between the two.  RT has the nostalgia factor for me since I read it as a kid, but OT has the cool factor for being the first OT version I've ever read.  Five stars for everybody!

So here's my card for The Secret of Shadow Ranch:

Of course I had to go with a cowboy image for Nancy's adventure in the Southwest.  Usually I would go for browns to go with horses, but since Nancy's mount on this cover is black, I went for Pebbled Path instead.  I found a sheet of DSP in the Fresh as a Daisy pack that had a variety of patterns on one side, and that's where I got the Pebbled Path background for my cowboy and the Misty Moonlight pattern for the background (and the Copper Clay pattern I used on the first card).  The Old Olive piece is a scrap from a previous Nancy Drew card and I chose it to match her shirt.

Misty Moonlight isn't necessarily a good match for the blues on the book cover, but I think it looks pretty good on the card with the other elements.  I still had the Apothecary Accents dies on my mind since I used them for last week's card, so I used them again for the sentiment on this card.  Speaking of the sentiment, this was my first time inking up the brand new Scenic Adventure stamp set because I made this card several weeks ago.

So there's the pair of cards, and if you enjoyed this deep dive into OT vs. RT even half as much as I did then you had a good time : )  If you make a card based on either book, drop me a comment, I would love to see.

Next up:  The Secret of Red Gate Farm!

Supplies, OT card:
Stamps:  Out West, Scenic Adventure
Ink:  Memento Tuxedo Black, Berry Burst, Berry Burst Blends
Paper:  Pacific Point, Basic Black, Thick Basic White, Fresh as a Daisy DSP, Blueberry Crisp DSP, Berry Burst DSP
Accessories:  Apothecary Accents dies, rhinestones, Dimensionals

Supplies, RT card:
Stamps:  Out West, Scenic Adventure
Ink:  Pebbled Path, Misty Moonlight, Old Olive
Paper:  Misty Moonlight, Pebbled Path, Thick Basic White, Fresh as a Daisy DSP, Autumn Splendor DSP Stack
Accessories:  Apothecary Accents dies, Noble Peacock rhinestones, Dimensionals