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Susan Beckham Zurenda

Authors at the Library

Author Susan Beckham Zurenda shares her novel No Way Out But Through as part of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Authors at the Library with SUSAN BECKHAM ZURENDA

3:30 p.m. | Book Sale Opens
4:00 p.m. | Author Talk with Susan Zurenda
4:40 p.m. | Audience Q&AA
4:50 p.m. | LSS CHOICES for Victims of Domestic Violence
5:00 p.m. | Book signing

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Beckham Zurenda taught English for 33 years on the college level and at the high school level to AP students. She is the author of the Southern literary novel, Bells for Eli, that received several awards including first place for Best First Book—Fiction in the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Her novel The Girl From the Red Rose Motel was the recipient of the 2024 Patricia Winn Award in Southern Fiction and first place winner for Southeast Fiction in the 2024 Independent Book Publisher Book Awards, among others. Zurenda has published and won awards for her short fiction, including the South Carolina Fiction Prize, twice. Susan lives in Spartanburg, SC.

Learn more at www.susanzurenda.com.

ABOUT THE BOOK

When author Shannon Irwin meets Grace Ferrall and agrees to interview the younger woman and tell the story of Grace’s forced child marriage and harrowing youth, these very different women begin an unlikely relationship. Grace’s ordeal starts in Louisiana, with an alcoholic father and a mother whose mood swings are often intolerable. When Grace is barely fifteen and living in Oklahoma, her mother manipulates her into marrying Rafe, a scurrilous, older man. Pregnant at sixteen, Grace is soon living in a truck near a river in Oregon with Rafe’s cult-like family.

After years of abuse and multiple pregnancies and miscarriages, with the help of an unlikely ally, Grace escapes. But her newfound freedom is fragile, and she is forced to make impossible choices to protect herself and her two daughters. Trust builds between the women as Grace shares details she has never told anyone, while Shannon, with a daughter Grace’s age, and ridden with guilt about her former marriage, reveals the dysfunction in her own life and the remorse she suffers.

A searing and compassionate exploration set in present-day Pawleys Island, South Carolina, and 1990s rural Oklahoma, No Way Out but Through is inspired by the real life of an ordinary woman who survived extraordinary circumstances.

EVENT DETAILS

The event is free to the public but due to limited seating registration is requested.

Author's books will be sold on site by The Book Loft.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month and this event is held in partnership with LSS CHOICES for Victims of Domestic Violence.

LSS CHOICES for Victims of Domestic Violence provides safety, shelter and support services for survivors of domestic violence and their children. As Franklin County’s only domestic violence shelter, LSS CHOICES offers safe emergency shelter, counseling, transitional and rapid rehousing services, community education and connections to resources that help survivors move toward safety and stability. Using a trauma-informed, client-centered approach, LSS CHOICES serves all survivors of domestic violence. LSS CHOICES is a program of Lutheran Social Services. Learn more at Home - LSS Choices.

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