NORTH PORT —One afternoon a student stayed after school to help Susan Beckham Zurenda figure something out on her computer.
Afterward, he needed a ride home and she reluctantly obliged because teachers are not supposed to give rides to students. But he didn’t live in that neighborhood and soon they were on the interstate.
“I’m thinking ‘What is going on here?’” she said. Then the mystery was solved as they pulled up in front of a motel.
“It wasn’t the worst one in town but it wasn’t too ‘swift’ either,” she said. She told him, “I can’t leave you here.” He said, “Yeah, you can. This is where I live.”
Zurenda, who was a teacher for 33 years, now is the author of two books.
There are two groups of people in her life: the people she interacts with and the characters those interactions inspire.
Zurenda will be at two local “author events” — one in North Port and the other in Punta Gorda — to discuss her second novel, “The Girl From the Red Rose Motel” (Mercer University Press, September 2023). She describes it as 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”