Eighteen-year-old Nancy Drew lives with her widowed father, Carson Drew, in the pleasant town of River Heights. They have a matronly housekeeper named Hannah Gruen. Nancy is an attractive blue-eyed blonde-haired person who often helps her father with his legal work by delivering documents and discussing cases with him. On a sunny spring day, Nancy is driving down a country road in her new blue convertible after delivering a set of documents, and she witnesses a truck nearly hit a little girl who darts into the road. The truck speeds off, but the girl falls off a low bridge into a creek.

Nancy immediately runs to help. The girl is unconscious and has bumps and bruises but is otherwise all right. The teen carries the child into the house across the road, where the girl’s two great-aunts, Edna and Mary Turner, are anxiously waiting. Mary explains that the two women became the guardians for young Judy after her parents died. They barely manage to scrape by and were expecting an inheritance from a deceased wealthy relative named Josiah Crowley that would have helped with Judy’s maintenance.