Sadly, her writing hasn't. Anybody who was reading romances in the 1970's was reading Woodiwiss. Times have changed . . . considerably. This romance pioneer is still writing, and we're still reading her, but no longer do I mark my calendar for her new releases. Now she's been replaced by Garwood, Quick, Deveraux, Putney . . .
Petals begins with a convict ship arriving in Newport News, Virginia.
As in a play, many actors are on stage. Spotlighted is Shemaine O'Hearne, a genteel young Irish woman, who's being harassed and abused by a scheming whore. As Woodiwiss tells us quite quickly, Shemaine is very innocent of all charges and has been wrongly convicted and sentenced to seven years of indentured servitude. The whore and the other secondary characters reappear on a rotating basis. Shipbuilder Gage Thornton, an English widower who's been in the colonies for nine years, needs an educated woman to care for his young son.