She had made up her mind not to mention it to Wilk. He was sure to have some logical explanation.
--From Cherry Ames, Clinic Nurse, p. 97
Strange things can happen in the world of series books--sometimes coincidental, sometimes not.
Inside Jokes
When Julie Tatham wrote her last book in the Cherry Ames series, Country Doctor's Nurse (1955), she deliberately included a couple of cross-references to two other series for which she'd also written books.
As Julie Campbell, she had originated the Trixie Belden series (begun in 1948), about the sleuthing exploits of Trixie and her best friend, Honey Wheeler, in Sleepyside-on-Hudson--which is the same place where Cherry Ames, at the urging of old friend Dr. Lex Upham, works as an office nurse for Dr. Clem Brown and becomes involved in a nasty mayoral campaign in Country Doctor's Nurse.
As Julie Tatham, she had written several Vicki Barr books after Helen Wells temporarily departed from the series. For most of the series (begun in 1947), Vicki is a flight stewardess with Federal Airlines--and in Country Doctor's Nurse, Cherry's old beau Wade Cooper is described as a commercial pilot for Federal, on the Mexico City run--the same place to which Vicki flew as a stewardess in The Hidden Valley Mystery (1948).
Though these two references were deliberate, there are other presumably coincidental cross-references within the Cherry Ames books and between these books and other series.
Some Coincidences
In Department Store Nurse (1956), Cherry and her pal Gwen Jones temporarily move in with Gwen's Aunt Kathy Martin out on Long Island. Youthful and lively, Aunt Kathy helps Cherry in her quest to obtain information about a possibly crooked antiques dealer. Three years later, a new nurse series, written by Josephine James, began publication, starring a character also named Kathy Martin.
In another coincidence involving the Kathy Martin series, Kathy trains at a tiny nursing school at California's San Tomás Hospital, and Cherry's Army Nurse Corps colleague, Panamanian nurse Rita Martinez, attended a tiny nursing school at "Hospital San Tomás ... one of the few nursing schools in Latin America" (Army Nurse, p. 182).
During Clinic Nurse (1952) Cherry's twin brother, Charlie, home from the state university for the summer, is a camp counselor at the Bluewater Boys' Camp, which he had attended as a boy, in the resort town of Bluewater, thirty miles from their hometown of Hilton, Illinois. Later, in Camp Nurse (1957), Cherry works at Camp Blue Water for girls in Pennsylvania.
In the Vicki Barr series, Vicki's family lives in an unusual house in Fairview, Illinois, which they call The Castle because it has a tower and high Norman-casement windows. In Dude Ranch Nurse (1953), Cherry visits an unusual structure in the Arizona desert. Also called The Castle, it was built by the fathers of Patty Doake and Harold Bean, and it holds the secret to Patty's inheritance.
Connie Blair, the heroine of the series by Betsy Allen (who also wrote nonseries young adult books as Betty Cavanna), works for Reid and Renshaw Advertising Agency. In The Green Island Mystery (1949), as part of her job, Connie and a coworker sail from New York to Bermuda on the Queen of Bermuda cruise ship--the same vessel on which Cherry Ames travels to Bermuda with her young patient Ronnie Pike in "Bermuda Adventure," a story in the 1958 Cherry Ames Girls Annual.
In A Flair for People (1955), one of her Career Romances for Young Moderns, Helen Wells wrote about personnel counselor Ann Roberts, who works in a New York City department store and meets a suspected store thief at the Mary White Restaurant. A year later, in Department Store Nurse, where else would Nurse Cherry meet a suspected store thief but the selfsame Mary White Restaurant?
Also in A Flair for People, a young woman decides to change her name from Minnie to Mona--a change reminiscent of the scene in Student Nurse in which a British child decides to call the Sally Chase demonstration doll Cherry brings her first Sally, then Minnie, and finally Mona.
Judy Meets Miss Ames
Most interesting is a coincidence in the Judy Bolton book entitled The Unfinished House (1938), by Margaret Sutton. In this book, written five years before the Cherry Ames series began, a mysterious, smirking Miss Ames makes an appearance. She attends a garden party wearing a large floppy hat with a daisy on it--a hat just like the one Judy is wearing, much to Judy's annoyance.
But, even worse, the unpleasant Miss Ames insinuates herself between Judy and her boyfriend, Peter Dobbs, who seems to follow whenever Miss Ames calls. Judy learns that Miss Ames works at the local hospital. And she and her associate, a Mr. Ames, who is probably her brother, turn out to be mixed up in a crooked real estate scheme in Judy's hometown.
Of course, Cherry Ames does have a twin brother named Charlie, and their fatheris in the real estate business ... Then again, our Miss Ames would never smirk.
Quirks, Coincidences, and Curiosities
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