55 pages • 1-hour read
King of Ashes
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Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism, substance use, addiction, graphic violence, sexual content, cursing, and death.
Chapter 1 Summary
Roman Carruthers runs a wealth management firm in Atlanta, Georgia. The 35-year-old attends a party with his friend Khalil, who provides security for celebrities. That night, he dreams of his mother, who disappeared when he was 16. The next morning, his sister, Neveah, calls to tell him that their father is in a coma following a car accident. He immediately rearranges his business calendar and tells his assistant that he will be gone “[l]ong enough to make sure [his] daddy isn’t going to die” (3).
Before he flies to Virginia, Roman visits a dominatrix named Miss Delicate, who is at least 10 years older than him. At the end of the session, Roman tells Miss Delicate that he is going to Virginia because his father was in an accident. She points out that he creates situations that lead him to be punished due to his issues with guilt and forgiveness, and she tells him to go to his father at once because this is not an appropriate time to perpetuate that pattern. During his flight, Roman reflects on the tragedies that have struck his parents and the seeming malice and indifference of the universe.
Chapter 2 Summary
The city of Jefferson Run, Virginia, was once a manufacturing hub, but many of the businesses have closed, with the exception of the Carruthers family’s crematory. This is the first time Roman has been home in five years. Neveah meets him at the hospital and tells him that their father, Keith, has nine broken ribs and a brain bleed, among other injuries. Visiting hours are over, but Roman persuades the white nurse to let him see his father by warning that if she calls security, he’ll post a video of the exchange on social media and say she did it because he is Black.
Neveah suspects that their father’s accident was foul play; his van was struck by a train after a truck ran him off the road. A few weeks earlier, someone slashed his tires. Roman and Neveah’s younger brother, Dante, has been out of touch since the accident, so Roman agrees to help her at the crematory in his stead. He has no desire to succeed his father as “the King of Ashes” and would rather let that title “burn with him” if his father is no longer able to run the family business (15).
Chapter 3 Summary
Roman’s mother worked as a surgical technician. Before opening the Carruthers crematory, his father was a gravedigger, and the family lived in a mobile home. Now Dante and Neveah live with Keith in a two-story manor in a gated community. Bonita Carruthers lived in the house for just six months before she disappeared after her night shift at Jefferson Run Memorial Hospital on June 6, 2003. Roman goes into the kitchen, pours himself a glass of his father’s scotch, and gazes morosely at a teddy bear-shaped cookie jar that belonged to his mother.
When Dante returns home late that night, he is high. Dante is glad to see his older brother, and he opens up about how much he misses their loving mother and wishes their father would say that he’s proud of him. Roman sympathizes because Bonita was the family’s “guiding light,” but he guilts Dante into promising to visit their father. To keep Dante from driving under the influence, Roman agrees to go to a local bar with him.
Chapter 4 Summary
Roman drives Dante’s red Challenger, a gift from Keith, to a bar called Candy’s. Dante buys drinks for several patrons, prompting his older brother to advise him to be more careful with money due to their father’s impending medical bills. Dante begins to cry, says that he doesn’t love their father just because of his money, and admits that he feels unintelligent compared to his siblings. Roman hugs his brother and tells him that everything will be all right now that he’s home, even though he doubts the truth of his own words.
When a man with long braids and a man with an afro and “a gold pendant of a skull in a top hat” walk into the club (26), Dante becomes frightened and hurriedly leaves with Roman. A man lights the hood of the Challenger on fire while Roman and Dante are inside the vehicle, and Roman fights the flames with his shirt.
Chapter 5 Summary
Back home, Dante breaks down in tears and confesses that their father was attacked because of him. The 30-year-old felt infantilized because his father paid for everything for him and tried to make some money by dealing drugs. The men with the afro and braids from the club gave Dante $300,000 worth of hard drugs because they know his family is wealthy. Dante and his friends, Getty and Cassidy, used most of the drugs themselves, and Roman deduces that Getty stole some of the drugs, a reality that his little brother is unprepared to face.
The men that Dante owes are called Torrent and Tranquil, and they lead an infamous gang called the Black Baron Boys (BBB). Dante is certain they ran Keith off the road. Roman tells Dante not to inform Neveah of this situation because she is already under a great deal of stress running the family business. He instructs his brother to arrange a meeting with Torrent and Tranquil at the crematory the following night. Dante is anxious and says, “[The] last time we tried to fix things it didn’t work out so well” (33). Roman tells his brother to trust him.
Chapter 6 Summary
Roman spends the next day helping Neveah run the crematory. As they finish their work for the day, the siblings’ conversation turns to their mother. Neveah voices her confusion that Bonita’s car was found near the train tracks, a part of the city she rarely visited. Neveah believes that Keith killed and cremated their mother because she was having an affair with his employee and close friend Oscar. Roman passionately protests that their father could never kill the woman he loves, but Neveah argues, “The more you love somebody, the more a broken heart turns that love to hate” (41). She texts someone named Chauncey that she can’t meet him that night and drives home.
As Roman prepares for his meeting with the gang leaders, he reflects on his father’s business motto, “Everything burns.” Although Roman’s net worth exceeds a million dollars, most of his money is in accounts that he’s unable to withdraw from. His strategy is to strike a deal with Torrent and Tranquil Gilchrist the way that he would with CEOs. The gang leaders arrive with three members of the Black Baron Boys. Roman tells the Gilchrist brothers that he can give them $200,000 now and have another $50,000 by the end of the month. He suggests that they see Dante’s friends about the $50,000 they stole.
Torrent, the man with the afro, counters that Dante’s debt is $420,000 because he promised to pay them back with interest. When Roman tries to make a counteroffer, Tranquil shoves his gun into Roman’s mouth and strikes the top of his head, shattering four of his teeth. Torrent says that he expects Roman to pay Dante’s debt and tells one of his men to shoot Dante. To save his brother’s life, Roman promises to use his wealth management skills to make Torrent and Tranquil triple the money that Dante owes them, and he adds that they can use the crematorium to dispose of bodies for one month. Torrent accepts the bargain, but he cuts off Dante’s pinkie as punishment for disrespecting him.
Chapters 1-6 Analysis
In the novel’s first section, Roman Carruthers begins his descent into the criminal underworld of Jefferson Run. As a noir thriller, the story features the genre convention of a morally ambiguous protagonist who faces great odds. Roman is introduced as a mostly upstanding person, despite shady friends like Khalil, unethical clients, and his personal demons. The violence that Torrent and Tranquil unleash on Roman and Dante in Chapter 6 intensifies the novel’s suspense and demonstrates that the protagonist is dangerously out of his depth. This incident establishes that, if Roman is to protect his family and defeat the novel’s antagonists, he must undergo significant changes. Driven by the good intentions of his desire to protect his family, he becomes complicit in the gang’s activities by placing his wealth management skills and the family’s crematory in the service of the brutal gang leaders. This “bargain with the devil” sets the stage for much of the novel’s plot and the protagonist’s transformation (53).
The narrative’s movement from the wealth of Atlanta to the poverty of Jefferson Run uses setting to illustrate The Socioeconomics of Moral Decay. Roman’s name invokes the power and grandeur of the Roman Empire, which reflects the opulence of the millionaire’s life in Georgia, where he drives a Porsche, attends high-profile parties, and owns an affluent wealth management firm. In sharp contrast, his hometown is a city full of “boarded-up buildings and broken streetlamps” (10). The Carruthers’ crematory, a business that relies on death, is one of the few enterprises still thriving in Jefferson Run. This representation aligns with the grim view of society and human nature often seen in noir fiction. Adding nuance to the theme, the link between money and the city’s surging crime rates extends beyond the greed of individual gang lords like Torrent and Tranquil to encompass broader societal factors like white flight, government corruption, and a paucity of legitimate employment opportunities that offer a meaningful quality of life.
The love and pain that bind Roman, Dante, and Neveah together introduce the theme of The Weight of Family Loyalty and Generational Trauma. The Carruthers siblings have been irrevocably changed by the loss of their mother. While this tragedy makes it difficult for them to connect to other people, it also binds Neveah and her brothers close together: “They were siblings, flesh of the same flesh. What they knew, no one else could possibly know or understand” (11). Neveah holds a particularly strong connection to this theme. Her name, which is one letter away from being ‘heaven’ spelled backwards, reflects her role as the keeper of the family’s moral compass and the one holding the Carruthers together at the start of the novel, placing her under enormous strain. As the story continues, the siblings’ loyalty to one another drives them to compromise their consciences even as their shared traumas threaten to divide them.
Both the protagonist’s psyche and the setting of Jefferson Run are trapped in The Relentless Cycle of Guilt and Punishment. Cosby quickly establishes that Roman lives with crushing guilt through his interactions with Miss Delicate; she tells him, “You like to create situations where you need to be punished. Even if you have to punish yourself” (7). Although the exact reasons behind this behavioral pattern are not yet revealed, the author indicates that Roman feels responsible for his mother’s disappearance. While the story’s main character torments himself, the novel’s antagonists unleash cruel punishments upon anyone who dares to cross them, establishing Jefferson Run as a dangerous place run by greedy criminals. Both the car crash that puts Keith in a coma and the amputation of Dante’s finger are acts of retribution for Dante’s unpaid debts. These instances of violence add to the crime novel’s horror and suspense and perpetuate the theme’s vicious cycle by leading Roman to vow vengeance against Torrent and Tranquil.
Bonita’s disappearance adds an element of mystery to the crime epic, and Cosby offers clues that foreshadow her fate in these early chapters. For example, Roman’s deep reluctance to return to the crematory hints that the family business has traumatic associations for him because his mother died there. The crematory functions as a motif of the weight of familial loyalty and generational trauma because it is the site of much of the pain and sense of duty that binds the Carruthers family together. The cookie jar shaped like a “smiling light brown teddy bear with a bright red bow” is first mentioned in Chapter 3 (17), and later in the novel, it’s revealed to contain Bonita’s ashes. In Chapter 5, Dante tells Roman, “[The] last time we tried to fix things it didn’t work out so well” (33), a comment that foreshadows the revelation that their mother died after the brothers confronted her about her affair. In another clue that Roman had a hand in their mother’s death, Neveah challenges her brother’s certainty that Keith didn’t kill Bonita in Chapter 6, saying, “Of course I think he did it. Matter of fact, why don’t you?” (41). It’s later revealed that Roman knows his father didn’t kill Bonita because Keith was not present when Roman accidentally caused his mother’s lethal fall.
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