On the passing of a maestro of crushing love scenes

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Last week romance publishing said goodbye to Kathleen Woodiwiss, who died at 68. When I was a kid, I didn’t have any idea how revolutionary ‘The Flame and the Flower’ was, but I knew that my mom and all her friends were reading it. After one of my mom’s coffee klatches--an informal book club, circa 1978--I found her paperback copy on the kitchen table next to an ashtray, several scattered cups and saucers and a half-eaten strudel.

With that book, Woodiwiss showed romance writers how to write tingly love scenes. After hearing of her death, I found my mother’s copy, all yellowed and taped up, on a shelf by the fireplace. I cracked it open to search for one of those panting scenes that critics say made Woodiwiss a pioneer in the romance novel field. It wasn’t difficult to find one:

‘She moved her arm out of the way, and Brandon paled as she moved guilelessly between his knees. There was an ugly scratch marring the white skin of her underarm, and a long vicious-looking pin protruded from the material at the side of her breast, but the head of the pin was inside her gown and it couldn’t be freed from without. Most reluctantly he reached up and slid two fingers inside her bodice against the soft warm flesh of her breast as she stood obediently motionless and watched him with trusting eyes. His gaze caught hers for a second, and amazingly his face flushed red.

‘ ‘What the hell!’ he thought angrily. ‘She has me blushing like an unsullied virgin!’ ‘

Woodiwiss made her blushing readers feel the same way.

When I left my mom’s house with the book in hand for this column, she said something that I’ve never heard her say before when I’ve taken a book: ‘Hey, when you’re done with it, I want it back.’

Nick Owchar