“Thoroughly compelling. . . To call When All the Girls Stopped Singing a thriller or suspense story would be to do it an injustice. It’s a social and psychological commentary on surviving violence, change, and trauma.”
MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
A journey into war, family, and the cost of telling the truth.
When Zora Monro’s mother dies, she leaves behind a revelation that shatters everything Zora believed about herself: she was adopted and her origins trace to a country being torn apart by war. Zora abandons her work as a spokeswoman for a human rights organization and travels to Sudan in search of her blood relatives. The journey opens a dangerous web of shifting alliances, unbridled greed, and state-sanctioned violence.
Guided through a daunting landscape by men whose loyalties become uncertain, she uncovers a brutal family history. In the ruins of a torched village, Zora finds the shattered family she never knew: her uncle Luk and a young teenager named Abuk who faces a terrifying future. Zora is asked to take Abuk to America, a startling request that forces her to confront what it means to claim family not by choice but from a sense of duty.
Back home in Washington, DC, as Zora slowly discovers how to nurture a deeply traumatized girl, she also holds evidence capable of exposing the hidden forces behind the predatory regime. But finding the right channel to share this information could prove fatal to Zora and to those she loves.
WHEN ALL THE GIRLS STOPPED SINGING is a haunting, urgent novel about the bonds that emerge when survival demands responsibility in the face of profoundly inhuman events.
Media Kit
A Washington DC human rights advocate. A mother’s secret. A journey into a nation at war.
The media kit for WHEN ALL THE GIRLS STOPPED SINGING includes everything you need to cover this debut novel — hook, short description, author bio, press release, book details, and high-resolution cover and author photo downloads.
Interviews:
Susan on Authors Electric!
Meet the Author
Susan Burgess-Lent is a veteran international aid worker, Emmy Award–winning documentary editor, and author dedicated to amplifying voices often ignored.
She founded Women’s Centers International, a nonprofit that establishes community resource hubs for women displaced by conflict and poverty.
Her published works include Trouble Ahead: Dangerous Mission with Desperate People, a nonfiction book (Amazon 2019); In the Borderlands (Xlibris, 2000); short stories in anthologies including Gargoyle Magazine and SFWC’s 2022 Anthology; and scores of essays on social justice and women’s rights on her website and on Substack.
Susan and her family reside in Oakland, California.
