At the outset: this book is not for the faint of heart. If you’ve read any prior S.A. Cosby novels, you know that violence–gritty, ugly, cruel, unvarnished–is an integral part of his characters’ worlds. These characters are usually trying to escape violence, but it comes for them due to fate, personal choice, or some combination of both. One of my favorite aspects of Cosby’s oeuvre is that blodshed is never pretty or glorified. The main characters, because they are essentially human, despise the carnage that surrounds them, even if it is a consequence of the choices they make. King of Ashes is Cosby’s most violent novel, and this violence helps make the story even more tragic.
The novel concerns three siblings, children of Keith Carruthers, a self-made crematory owner who has been hospitalized after a hit-and-run leaves him comatose, perhaps never to regain consciousness. The oldest son, Roman, has escaped their hometown of Jefferson Run, Virginia, to make a life as an investment banker in Atlanta. He returns to visit his father when younger sister Neveah, the middle child who has been helping to run the crematorium, tells him about their father’s condition; left unsaid but all too obvious is the fact that troubled baby brother Dante’s forays into illegal behavior have led to the hit-and-run. Oh, and their mother disappeared years ago without a trace after having an affair, so much of Jefferson Run assumes that Keith killed her in a jealous rage, then cremated her body.
As Roman seeks to free Dante from the death grip of the gang that orchestrated the hit-and-run, it quickly becomes clear that no one will escape this story unscathed. My favorite S.A. Cosby novel, Blacktop Wasteland, has an ambiguously downbeat ending; the last pages of King of Ashes make BW‘s finale look like a fairy-tale ending. The siblings are doomed to their fates because of the secrets that they refuse to share. Cosby indicts the male Carruthers’ misogyny toward their sister Neveah by illustrating the poisonous impact of their desire to protect her from the truth. And it maims them all.