Podcast Summary: "Get Lit Preview: S.A. Cosby on 'King of Ashes'"
Podcast: All Of It with Alison Stewart, WNYC
Airdate: October 6, 2025
Featured Guest: S.A. Cosby (author, King of Ashes)
Host: Alison Stewart
Interviewer: Tiffany Hansen
Main Theme & Purpose
In this episode, Alison Stewart previews the October "Get Lit with All Of It" book club selection: King of Ashes by bestselling crime novelist S.A. Cosby. The conversation, conducted by Tiffany Hansen, dives into the novel's setting, characters, and underlying themes, centering on family, the impact of place, money, guilt, and morality. Listeners gain insight into Cosby’s storytelling craft and what makes King of Ashes a compelling read, especially for those drawn to complex, morally driven thrillers.
Key Discussion Points & Insights
Setting as Character: Jefferson Run, Virginia
- Depicted as a "town that in many ways their best days are behind them."
- Once a manufacturing hub, now economically depressed and overtaken by crime.
- S.A. Cosby observes:
"Nature abhors a vacuum and so something has to fill it. And a lot of what goes on at Jefferson Run goes on because of the fact that it has been sort of forgotten and lost." (02:27)
How Place Acts on People
- The Home Town’s Grip:
- Roman escapes; Nevaeh feels resigned; Dante is caught in denial and addiction.
- Cosby notes the psychological weight of place:
"That town really weighs on each character and sort of affects the decisions they make, which also affects the plot." (03:17)
The Pieces We Carry From Home
- Universal Relatability:
- Discussion about how leaving home shapes identity; what’s kept and what’s shed.
- Cosby reflects:
"It’s very fascinating how you’re able to sort of compartmentalize those pieces in your new place...what are the things you have to let go and what are the things you have to sort of move on from?" (04:07)
Shaping the Protagonist: Roman Carruthers
- A Product of Hardship and Ambition:
- Roman’s upbringing made him ambitious, and morally flexible.
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"He feels like, well, there are rules that are meant to be bent, and there are rules that can be broken, because the only rule is that you win." (05:00)
Money, Guilt, and Family Ties
- The "Acidity of Money":
- Money as a corrosive force, both relationally and personally.
-
"Money can sort of burn through relationships, burn through connections, the way money burns through us." (06:35)
- Family Guilt:
- Complicated by absenteeism, abandonment, and shared anxieties around Dante’s fate.
-
"The themes of guilt are huge in the book. And not just guilt for something major, but for the minor parts, the things that we have as family members, this sort of interconnectivity that sometimes we have to apologize for or sometimes we don’t know we have to apologize for." (07:10)
Moral Boundaries and Redemptive Value
- How Dark is Too Dark?
- The question of narrative peril and characters' moral compromises is essential.
-
"If the reader doesn’t believe everybody is on the line, that everybody is in danger...I had to push it and make it a little bit more dark, a little bit more intense, because I wanted you to really believe...anybody could get taken out at any time." (08:17)
- On Writing Violence and Morality:
- Violence serves to reveal both strength and weakness in characters.
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"Violence can be very expository...It can tell you a lot about a character and how strong a character is or how weak a character is." (08:57-09:22)
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Shifting Lines and Justification:
"There aren’t really any lines. They’re just choices...He keeps telling himself, I’m doing this for my family. And that’s a noble cause, that’s a righteous cause, but do the ends really justify the means?" (10:30-10:59)
Testing Characters (and Readers)
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S.A. Cosby on Character Resilience:
"I never wanted it to be gratuitous...the things they face are the test to see how they can handle it as a character. Because the part of the story is, I don’t want them to be the same at the end...as they were in the beginning." (11:37)
-
On Making Readers Squirm:
"If a reader tells me this book made me cry...but I couldn’t leave it alone. That’s a win. That’s a win for me." (12:06)
Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments
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S.A. Cosby:
"Nature abhors a vacuum and so something has to fill it." (02:20)
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On Money’s Cost:
"I wanted to talk about, as I call it in the book, the acidity of money..." (06:35)
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On Writing Violence:
"For me, violence doesn’t have to be four or five pages. I think it’s more effective to just say what happens, put it out on the page, and then you can move on to the next thing." (09:01)
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On Gray Morality:
"There aren’t really any lines, they’re just choices." (10:32)
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On Reader Impact:
"If a reader tells me this book made me cry, I had to close it. I had to walk away from it, but I couldn’t leave it alone. That’s a win." (12:06)
Timestamps for Important Segments
- [01:56] – Introduction to Jefferson Run and its economic decline
- [03:00] – Place as a character; how it shapes Roman, Nevaeh, and Dante
- [03:59] – The concept of taking your hometown with you
- [04:50] – Roman’s ambition and moral flexibility
- [06:28] – Exploring major themes: money, guilt, and family
- [08:03] – Deciding how far to push darkness and danger in the story
- [08:57] – The narrative function of violence and character development
- [10:02] – On moral lines, character choices, and justification
- [11:24] – Testing characters’ and readers’ limits
Final Thoughts
This episode offers a riveting look at the DNA of S.A. Cosby’s King of Ashes—its dark energy, the pull of place and family, and the friction between survival and morality. Cosby's commentary provides deeper layers to the storytelling, making this pod essential for club readers and podcast listeners drawn to contemporary Southern noir.
To join the book club or RSVP for the live event with S.A. Cosby and YaYa Bey on October 28th, visit wnyc.org/getlit.