People stopped coming, the hotels and casinos came down, and the boardwalk grew so seedy and unsafe that the town finally bought the land in 1992 and tore down most of the remaining buildings.īut the romance of Colonial Beach is returning, an outer ripple of the D.C. It often pines for its glory days, in the 1950s, when grand steamboats and pink airplanes delivered tens of thousands of men and women in glamorous outfits from Washington, spilling them out onto the bustling boardwalk, where they would play carnival games and slot machines.īut then gambling laws changed, and things slowly dried up. The tale of the real Colonial Beach is a romance of sorts, too, a story about a sleepy little town of 3,200 people that's been a little down on its luck lately. 'I got to develop the boardwalk my way!' Woods, 59, said of the story. The book, one of more than 80 she has written, takes place in mythical Trinity Harbor, where Jenna Pennington Kennedy - 'a sexy single mom,' the book jacket says - tries to capture the attention of landowner Bobby Spencer so she can win 'an opportunity to plan the town's new riverfront development.' Sherryl Woods, anxious about plans to develop the dilapidated boardwalk in Colonial Beach, the Potomac River town where she has summered since the 1940s, transformed the fight into a steamy tale called 'Ask Anyone.' Bond debts, easements and condominium proposals don't sound like obvious material for a romance novel, but perhaps that's how you work through municipal frustrations when you're a romance novelist.

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