When driving through a small town or down a lonely road in South Carolina, you might find dilapidated motels and enormous mansions. The imagination can run wild thinking about the possible tales that emanate from these spaces. Author Susan Beckham Zurenda explores what those places might hold in her latest novel, The Girl from the Red Rose Motel.
Fellow South Carolinian and writer Ron Rash hailed her latest project as brimming with complex characters and a story that is “deeply moving without veering into sentimentality.”
The Girl from the Red Rose Motel follows two students from completely different walks of life who meet during in-school suspension and fall in love soon after. As their feelings grow, Hazel, who lives with her homeless family in the rundown Red Rose Motel, and Sterling, an affluent teen living in a mansion, find support in their English teacher, Angela Wilmore, who’s in the midst of her own romantic drama in a budding relationship with the school’s principal.
“One theme in common among most of my stories and my two novels is my characters’ struggles to let go and the courage involved in coping after they’ve had to ‘give up’ a relationship, a place or situation that is no longer possible in that character’s life,” Zurenda said.
“The Girl from the Red Rose Motel covers a number of timely themes and subjects — such as the struggles of young people living in motels and the challenges of public school teaching. Perhaps the most powerful theme illustrated among my three main characters is the tremendous benefit that can occur when very different people find unexpected connections. It is about the enormous capacity of love.”
Zurenda said her favorite part of the writing process is the initial drafting and the moment the characters emerge on the page. With the three central characters of The Girl from the Red Rose Motel, she said she liked writing each one for different reasons.
“I can’t say that I enjoyed writing one more than the others,” she said. “I had fun getting inside a teenage boy’s head and hearing Sterling’s voice come alive. I felt every struggle that Hazel felt as she strived to overcome her compromised living conditions at the Red Rose Motel with tenacity and courage. I wanted her to succeed as much as she did.”
As a high school and college educator who taught literature, composition and creative writing to thousands of students for 33 years, Zurenda, a lifelong South Carolinian, felt a kinship to the teacher character, Angela.
“I felt particularly close to Angela … Still, she is not me. She’s a lot nicer and funkier than I ever was! And with the exception of two scenes based on my actual teaching experiences, her story arc is completely imagined. Rather, I created Angela’s character out of my general understanding of teaching in a public high school.”
While it wasn’t her original intention, Zurenda said the book highlights some of her ambitions and concerns.
“I hope to raise awareness about the abysmal circumstances of families who live in rundown motels and to show how sometimes very different people coming together on multiple levels can help those like my character Hazel escape,” she said.
“According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the number of sheltered homeless in motels in America on a single night at the end of January 2022 was 348,630. Also, teaching is in crisis in our country as many leave the profession amid burnout and low salaries, among other things. The novel brings awareness of the challenges of teaching in public school, but it also acclaims the joys of teaching.”
But above all else, Zurenda’s novel is a love story.
“Most of all, I hope readers of The Girl from the Red Rose Motel will feel the overwhelming capability of love to overcome obstacles that only seem insurmountable.”
Buxton Books will host An Evening With Susan Beckham Zurenda at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 16. To reserve a spot at the free in-store event, please email rsvp@buxtonbooks.com. Learn more at susanzurenda.com.
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