Sherlock Holmes has a sister. I bet you didn’t know that. Well, at least he does in the imagination of the author Nancy Springer. In the tradition of the great feminist retellings — Wide Sargasso Sea, Circe, even Wicked — Springer imagines what it would be like for the famous and esteemed detective to have a little sister, forever in his shadow. Springer also imagines what kind of mother would have given birth to the Sherlock Holmes many of us know and love. Women are not the focus of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original series and its’ film and TV adaptations. There are a couple of exceptions to that, chief among them being Irene Adler in “A Scandal in Bohemia.” But, by and large, they are kept in the background. In the young adult series Enola Holmes Mysteries, Nancy Springer answers the question, ‘what if the intellect and observational skills of Sherlock Holmes were attributed to a young woman instead?’ What if a young woman got to go on adventures, skirt danger, solve mysteries, and save the day?
Continue reading
