After a long career teaching English to high school teens and community college adults from all backgrounds, along with her own accumulated years and a lifetime of reading literature, Susan Beckham Zurenda thought she was aware of most human circumstances. She was wrong.

Until she met and interviewed the woman who inspired her third novel, No Way Out but Through, she was ignorant of the prevalence and potentially devastating consequences of child marriage in the United States.

The woman who motivated this novel was coerced by her mother into marriage at age 15 to a man her mother likely knew had assaulted her daughter at age 13. She was old enough to be married with parental consent, but she wasn’t old enough to initiate legal help in the form of a protective order or even file for divorce. Her husband possessed full legal custody, essentially a form of child trafficking. After a decade of anguish, through her immense determination and with outside support, she managed to escape with her children.

Unchained At Last, a survivor-led nonprofit dedicated to ending forced and child marriage in the United States, reports approximately 315,000 minors, some as young as age 10, were legally married in the United States between 2000 and 2021. Approximately 86 percent of underage marriages involve girls and 14 percent involve boys. Most of the girls are wed to adult men.

Susan is honored to present No Way Out but Through and hopes that readers will be captivated by this emotional novel of two women from different generations—one the victim of an abusive teen marriage and the other damaged from her former marriage to an alcoholic husband—who meet under odd circumstances.

The story begins when author Shannon Irwin meets protagonist Grace Ferrall and agrees to write the younger woman’s shocking truth. Told as a frame story with dual narration set in present-day Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, and 1990s rural Oklahoma, No Way Out but Through portrays Grace’s ordeal that begins with an alcoholic father and a mother with intolerable mood swings. When Grace is barely 15, her mother manipulates her into marrying Rafe, a scurrilous, older man. After years of abuse, 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.

As Grace and Shannon’s unusual relationship develops, both women are impelled to grapple with their inner demons by confronting their untold stories. Through their willingness to be open and vulnerable with each other, both women begin to trust and heal—to believe in themselves—in this novel of the resilience of the human spirit.

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, South Carolina. Learn more at www.susanzurenda.com.

Early Endorsements

“Zurenda’s latest novel is a remarkable feat of literary alchemy, as she blends a pair of powerful narratives into a rich, satisfying tale of resilience and redemption. Grace and Shannon – women who quietly bear the burdens of their past traumas – become each other’s confessor, and they discover surprising levels of vulnerability and empathy as their twin stories unfold, gut-punching the reader page after page. In No Way Out but Through, Zurenda is in complete control of her craft, gifting us a pair of characters whose stories echo long after the final sentence.”  – Scott Gould, author of Peace Like a River and Beneath a Fallen Sky

“Cracking the spine of this novel wide open is the only way to read it, fully prepared to scrape your knees on the way through, but lifted to your feet by the grace notes in the end. Susan Zurenda is beloved by readers for her unflinching portrayals of characters who could be our neighbors, family, and friends and somehow discovering solidarity in the midst of their difficulties. In No Way Out but Through, she celebrates the compassion between two damaged women of different generations whose unexpected friendship helps them find courage and healing in the discovery that each is not alone, a message that will resonate in every sensitive heart today.”  – Kimberly Brock, award winning author of The Fabled Earth

“An author nearing retirement age and consumed with her own family problems, reluctantly agrees to chronicle the life of a cleaning service owner with a horrific story and a desperate need to share it. Although the two women come from vastly different worlds, they develop an unlikely but tender bond once they’re sequestered on beautiful Pawley’s Island to complete the book. With lyrical prose and keen insight into the struggles of two very different women, Susan Zurenda explores the power of story to bring healing and redemption to even the most damaged life. No Way Out but Through will haunt you long after you’ve turned the final page.”  – Cassandra King, author of Tell Me a Story: My Life with Pat Conroy

“Susan Zurenda returns with her most transcendent novel yet, exploring both the difficulty and the power of telling the truth—especially to ourselves. Once again Zurenda draws unforgettable characters in lush, evocative settings in a story of survival, trust, and the healing that can happen when we are brave enough to let others truly see us. No Way Out but Through is a masterclass in storytelling by an author with a deeply moving grasp of the
human condition. Five breathtaking stars!”  – Kristy Woodson Harvey, New York Times bestselling author of Beach House Rules