Author Susan Zurenda Coming to Buxton Books with “The Girl From the Red Rose Motel”

Author Susan Zurenda is coming to Charleston with her new Southern literary novel, The Girl From the Red Rose Motel. She will be appearing at Buxton Books on October 16th beginning at 5:30 pm. During the event, Zurenda will meet readers and sign books. Plus, the event, which is free and open to the public, will feature refreshments and wine.

Inspired by her experiences teaching in a Spartanburg public high school and the 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.

Hazel’s family once lived in a safe neighborhood with pleasant surroundings. Her father was gainfully employed in a truck-driving business with his brother while her mother brought in extra income cleaning houses. It all changed when Hazel’s father fell out with his brother and lost his job. The family became homeless with no alternative but to live week to week at the Red Rose Motel. During the course of the novel, the people and circumstances in Hazel’s life propel her from being a “scared rabbit,” as Sterling first thinks of her, toward a courageous maturity that engenders a bold and surprising decision at the novel’s end.

You can learn more about the event here.

For more information about the book, read “The Story Behind The Girl from the Red Rose Motel” by Susan Zurenda below:

“The Girl From the Red Rose Motel tells a story in which two high school students from vastly different backgrounds who fall in love attempt to navigate complications readers might never imagine. Interwoven with the story of Hazel, an impoverished girl, and the affluent Sterling is the story of their English teacher, Angela Wilmore, as she confronts the multi-faceted challenges of the overloaded life that public high school teachers face every minute of their days, in and out of the classroom.

I taught for many years at a community college before I took a job at a local high school for the last decade of my career. The genesis for The Girl from the Red Rose Motel came out of my experiences at Spartanburg High School where I taught four classes of 12th grade AP English and a fifth class called Reading Strategies. My day consisted of polar opposites: extremely bright and typically privileged AP students working to get ahead with college credit earned in high school versus nearly illiterate teenagers, most from deprived backgrounds, trying to read well enough to pass the exit exam to graduate.

The wide disparity among my students and my desire to succeed in teaching both extremes was the inspiration for creating the characters of Sterling Lovell and Hazel Smalls, students from opposite socioeconomic backgrounds who meet when they are sent to in-school suspension and form an unlikely relationship. Sterling’s character is an amalgam inspired by a clique of eight very smart, troublemaker boys, most from affluent families, in my AP classes. They had acted out and terrorized their teachers from middle school forward. Although I did not consciously make the association when I was creating Hazel, I have since realized her character is reminiscent of a sweet, lovely but disadvantaged student named Rickeja, who in spite of her fourth grade reading level when she entered my Reading Strategies class, was determined to pass the exit exam for graduation. She succeeded.

One winter afternoon I gave a ride home to a student who had stayed after school to help me with a computer project and was stunned to learn he lived in a run-down motel. I was reluctant to let him out of the car, but he assured me that was his home. I later learned more about the circumstance of motels as residences for the homeless from a proactive guidance counselor who started a nonprofit organization to assist families living in motels in our city. I volunteered to help and served meals at Christmas time where I met and talked to people living in motels. Hazel’s home in a dilapidated motel reflects similar living conditions for hundreds of families in my town, and hundreds of thousands throughout the country.”

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