Susan Beckham Zurenda

Oct 6, 2023 | deepsouthmag.com | Ron Rash |Kim Foote |Susan Beckham Zurenda

It’s 1951 in Blowing Rock, North Carolina. Blackburn Gant, his life irrevocably altered by a childhood case of polio, seems condemned to spend his life among the dead as the sole caretaker of a hilltop cemetery. The inexplicable occurrences that happen from time to time rattle him less than interaction with the living. But when his best and only friend, the kind but impulsive Jacob Hampton, is conscripted to serve overseas, Blackburn is charged with caring for Jacob’s wife, Naomi, as well.

Sep 3, 2023 | davidsonlocal.com | Susan Beckham Zurenda

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.