Patsy Carroll #1 Wilderness Lodge and #2 Southern Skies

The Patsy Carroll series consists of four books written under the pseudonym of Grace Gordon.

1.  Patsy Carroll at Wilderness Lodge, 1917
2.  Patsy Carroll under Southern Skies, 1918
3.  Patsy Carroll in the Golden West, 1920
4.  Patsy Carroll in Old New England, 1921

The books were published by Cupples and Leon, initially in very expensive editions and later in much cheaper editions.  The early editions must have sold in small numbers due to the high price, so they are very hard to find these days.

The early editions are very thick light blue books with a glossy frontispiece, three glossy internals, and a white dust jacket with the same image as the book's cover.  The later editions are red books with just the glossy frontispiece.  The books pictured here are the early books.

Each story is around 340 pages long. Unfortunately, the stories are not complex enough to be 340 pages, and each book should have been around 150 pages shorter. These books contain lots of silly conversations used to fill up pages and pages of text.

In Patsy Carroll #1, Patsy Carroll at Wilderness Lodge, Patsy and her friends, Bee, Mabel, and Eleanor, decide to call themselves the Wayfarers.  The Wayfarers plan a trip to the Adirondacks with Patsy's Aunt Martha along as chaperone.  During the trip, the Wayfarers help find a lost will.

On page 66, Aunt Martha cautions against the girls trying to solve the mystery, since by doing so, they will "be turned into a band of sleuths."  I don't see anything wrong with that.

The last 60 to 80 pages of the book drag because the plot had already been resolved for the most part.

In Patsy Carroll #2, Patsy Carroll Under Southern Skies, the Wayfarers journey to Florida with Aunt Martha and Patsy's father. Mr. Carroll has recently purchased an old Spanish mansion, so the group will stay there during the Wayfarers' vacation.  Upon their arrival, the girls discover a strange girl running in the woods, a hostile servant, and a mean old woman who lives nearby.  Patsy senses a mystery and decides to solve it.

On page 22, the girls' dormitory is on fire. The girls gather downstairs, inside the burning building, where the girls line up and the matron takes roll.  After the matron takes roll, the matron selects the girls for the bucket brigade.  The bucket brigade is put together, then the other girls wait to leave the building until after the bucket brigade goes upstairs.  What the heck?  The fire is raging across the back of the building the entire time this is happening!  It's lucky everyone isn't killed in the fire!

This story has an excessive amount of negative racial stereotyping.  Mr. Carroll hires some workers, and he calls them his "black boys" all through the story.  They are also called "darkies," "negroes," and even the n-word.  It sounds so derogatory the way he refers to them.  Old books frequently have this sort of thing, but it's rather excessive in this story, with the references appearing every few pages all through the book.  The reader is never given a chance to forget that there are "black boys" nearby.

The author also gets in a few negative statements about Indians and Latinos for good measure.

On page 55, Mr. Carroll is called "Massa Carroll" by the "mammy."

On page 68, the girls are walking around the property, and Eleanor cries out, "There's a darkie over yonder, clipping away that thicket!"  The exclamation is uttered like seeing the man is somehow a bit of a curiosity, as if the girls are viewing a freak show at the circus.  Patsy then calls to the gardener, "Hey, there, Uncle!" to get his attention.  How very rude.  Of course, "Uncle" obsequiously runs over to the girls, eager to do whatever he can for them.

I enjoyed this book the most of the four books.  It has less filler than the other three stories.