Petals on the Wind

Petals on the Wind is a novel written by V. C. Andrews in 1980. It is the second book in the Dollanganger series. The timeline takes place from the siblings' successful escape in November 1960 to the fall of 1975. The book, like the others in the series, was a number one best-seller in North America in the early 1980s. In 2014, it was adapted into a Lifetime original movie. Plot Petals on the Wind picks up immediately where Flowers in the Attic left off: with Cathy, Chris, and Carrie traveling to Florida after escaping Foxworth Hall. Still weak from the effects of the poison that killed her twin brother Cory, Carrie gets sick on the bus. Henrietta "Henny" Beech, a mute African-American woman, rescues them and takes them to the home of her employer, 40-year-old widower Dr. Paul Sheffield of Clairmont, South Carolina. At first the children refuse to reveal their identities, but once Cathy is convinced that Paul genuinely cares and might be able to help them, she tells him their story. During the siblings' first Christmas with Paul, Cathy begins bleeding profusely during a ballet audition and collapses; after waking in the hospital, she is told that they had to perform a D&C and that the bleeding was due to irregular periods (due to her near-starvation in the attic). Cathy suspects that the bleeding was actually a miscarriage, the result of her sexual relationship with her brother, Christopher, in the attic; however, she does not mention this suspicion, telling herself that it is in the past and all that matters is her ability to dance.