Susan Beckham Zurenda

Susan Beckham Zurenda’s new novel, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel, is inspired by her experience teaching in a South Carolina public high school and her knowledge of homeless students living in motels. Set in the fictitious town of Ramsey, South Carolina, in 2012, the novel challenges social mores, embraces irresistible love, and develops relationships between adults and teenagers to propel three richly-drawn characters to push boundaries until Hazel, the girl from the Red Rose Motel, takes charge and makes an astonishing decision at the novel’s end.

Susan’s debut novel, Bells for Eli, (Mercer University Press, March 2020; paperback edition, March 2021) has garnered a number of awards including Gold Medal winner in the 2021 IPPY Awards for Best First Book—Fiction, 2020 Foreword Indie Best Book Awards, Winter 2020 Okra Pick by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance, American Book Fest's Best Books of 2020, and Shelf Unbound 2020 Notable Indie. The author has also won numerous awards for her published short fiction, including being a two-time winner of the South Carolina Fiction Project.