This Event has Passed
Author talk with Susan Zurenda to benefit Friends of the South Community Library
Author Susan Beckham Zurenda will talk about the condition of sheltered homeless teens in relation to her new novel, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel.
Inspired by the author's teaching in a Spartanburg, South Carolina, public high school and knowledge of homeless students living in motels, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel revolves around two high school students from vastly different backgrounds who improbably fall in love, and with the support of their sympathetic English teacher, attempt to navigate complications readers might never imagine.
Set in a fictitious Southern town in 2012, the novel is told from the points of view of protagonist Hazel Smalls, a bright but disadvantaged junior living with her family in a rundown motel; Sterling Lovell, a brilliant and advantaged high school senior; and Angela Wilmore, a stern but compassionate English teacher confronting the multifaceted challenges high school teachers face in and out of the classroom each day. When he crosses the line with Ms. Wilmore by taking over her lesson, Sterling is punished with a day of in-school suspension. There, he meets Hazel, and an unlikely connection sparks. As the teenagers’ relationship develops and Hazel suffers ever worsening conditions at home, Ms. Wilmore—involved in a budding relationship with the divorced principal—is compelled to go beyond the role of teacher to become Hazel’s foster parent.
The Girl From the Red Rose Motel is a multilayered novel that will appeal to readers of love stories, coming of age novels, literary teacher stories, and remarkable alliances between adults and teenagers.
