In this episode, local author Dr. Ashley Baker speaks with Ross about her new book The Ashes of Us, which is a novel that navigates themes of trauma, paternal love, and the devastating price of retribution. Dr. Baker talks about her inspiration for the book and how she's utilized her experiences and knowledge to write a book that is ultimately a tribute to her own father, who was a forensic pathologist.
Dr. Baker is a clinical psychologist (PsyD), who practices and lives in Forsyth County, and is author of two psychological suspense novels, including The Furious Others.
Dr. Baker will be at the Sharon Forks Library on October 22, 2025 at 7:00PM for a reading and author talk for The Ashes of Us.
Introduction:
Ross Gericke: Hello and welcome to Unreadable, the official Forsyth County Public Library Podcast for news, upcoming programs, and recommendations. I’m your host, Ross Gericke, the branch manager at Hampton Park.
In this episode, I speak with Dr. Ashley Baker, a local author and practicing clinical psychologist about her most recent book, The Ashes of Us. Dr. Baker will be hosting an author talk about The Ashes of Us at the Sharon Forks Library on October 22 from 7:00 to 8:00PM. Her first book The Furious Others is also a twisty, psychological thriller and definitely worth checking out.
Now on with the show.
Interview:
Ross Gericke: Ashley, welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.
Ross Gericke: So I think it's always exciting to talk to local authors because you're basically one of us. You're a library user. You live in the community, but why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you into the writing world.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Sure. Okay. Well, my day job, I am a clinical psychologist. I always say that is people, not rats. So I don't do a lot of studies in the lab. I did a lot of studies with people, children, adolescents, young adults, primarily. Although I also have a diversified practice because I work with veterans and I work with social security disability as well.
So I stay busy during the day seeing patients at my practice Pavilion Psychological here in Cumming and then at night when I'm not writing reports then I am writing books. So I often tell people, “Yes I am a psychologist who writes psychological thrillers.” So I hope that I do it justice.
Ross Gericke: I think so. I really enjoyed The Ashes of Us quite a bit. And it gives you a lot of material to mine for. Now I know you're not using patients’ individual information but certainly your knowledge.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Yes. It's funny because I tell people that this is probably my origin story for being a psychologist, that my dad was a pathologist, a forensic pathologist. So, even though the things in The Ashes of Us did not happen, that's totally fake. I made it up. He would play this game with me, which is probably again the origin story of someone that wants to go into mental health, where he would say because he would do autopsies and things like that, he would be like, "If you were going to try to get away with this, how might you do it?"
So, a lot of the hypothetical things in the book are almost verbatim conversations that he would kind of have. So again that is probably not unique to everyone's childhood but for me I did spend a lot of time in the lab at the hospital so I guess that's a part of what motivated me to write it as well.
Ross Gericke: It makes the book feel very authentic as a result.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Yes.
Ross Gericke: So, some of the creation of this book, if I'm not mistaken, took place at the Sharon Forks Library. Is that correct?
Dr. Ashley Baker: It did. I was a part of the adult programming. I think it's very hard as a writer to be vulnerable, to let people read your work. Now, what you will find if you're brave enough is that it makes you a tremendously better writer to have other people read it. And actually, the worst thing that anyone can tell you is, "Oh, I loved it and I have no notes." Because then there's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can improve.
So I have the Sharon Forks Library to thank for parts of this book, parts of The Furious Others, but just the opportunity to have people reflect. And you know, it's also true if a lot of people are like, “I have no idea what you're talking about in this line.” You know, if seven people say that, then you ought to change it. So I know that as a beginning writer, it can feel so daunting to go into the writer's club and share your words with people, but I a thousand percent recommend it. Absolutely.
Ross Gericke: Uh, do you know Alicia down at the Sharon Forks Library?
Dr. Ashley Baker: Oh, I know so good. She and I are friends, but we also really have identical taste in books. Like, she's a John Irving fan. I'm a John Irving fan. She's Chris Whitaker. I'm Chris Whitaker. Like, we just align a thousand percent on the books that we know and love, too. So, she is such a hard worker and just, you know, she gives her all. So, I'm so happy to know her.
Ross Gericke: Yeah, I needed to name drop Alicia on the podcast. I know she listens to it. I've worked with her for years. So, hey Alicia, you got mentioned on the podcast.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Yeah, you're great. We're fans.
Ross Gericke: So, for our listeners who may not be familiar with your most recent book, The Ashes of Us, why don't you give us a brief synopsis, sort of the elevator pitch.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Sure. Okay. Well, it started with this one concept. If your child asked you to do something that they needed to heal, even if it was reprehensible, would you do it? And I'm a mom, so I have a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old, and I often think just psychologically about the morality or the murkiness of doing the right things for the wrong reasons.
So, in The Ashes of Us, a college student is assaulted and she tells her dad, "I need you to take care of this so that I can heal. I need this in order to be whole again." And he has the means and the knowledge to really honor that request. But it also is something that comes at a cost. And it's something that in movies and TV shows, one of my pet peeves is when something traumatic happens and everybody's okay. You know, it changes nothing. And as a psychologist, I know that to be false. I know that trauma changes who we are, how we react to the world. And so I thought I am not going to write a book where something happens and people just recover instantaneously. I want to write it how it really would be.
And so in The Ashes of Us, it does explore if you do what she wants you to do, how would that impact your relationship? How would that impact the parent-daughter dynamic? How would that influence everything going forward?
Ross Gericke: Yeah. And the book really has, I think, a somewhat bleak view of justice, or maybe an honest view of how justice works. Like you said there's lots of references to classic westerns and vigilantism. But it also, like you said, doesn't really celebrate that stuff either. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance comes up a couple of times in the book, which I think is a fabulous movie. For a John Wayne film, it does have sort of a bleak ending. What would you say the book's relationship to justice is or your relationship to it?
Dr. Ashley Baker: I mean, I was raised by a cowboy. Like, my dad was obsessed with all those old westerns. So a lot of that is just parroting stuff that I heard my whole life. Like “For Texas and for Miss Lily” and “if this isn't the way it happened, this is the way it should have happened.” That's what the judge says, you know. So, I grew up just schooled in John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart and all the ideas that justice can look like bleakness if you're in the Wild West. Now we tend to think of it as a lot more dainty or more legalese, but there is a subset of people and my dad was sort of this way, where he would kind of say, “Well this is how the cowboys would deal with it if that was still around.” So it kind of tapped into themes that I really like anyway, like characters that are sort of anti-heroes where you agree but then you are sort of like, “I don't know, that's a little dark. I don't know if I agree with that.” I like to write characters that are nuanced like that.
Ross Gericke: Yeah, I was very surprised in the book when Addison asks her dad, David, to, like you said, basically take care of the person who assaulted her, and he doesn't even hesitate. Like, he's like, "Yeah, you got it." And he immediately starts planning. Is that – again we're imagining a scenario here – but is that sort of based – does that come from your dad too? That sort of like, you just think he would leap in with both feet?
Dr. Ashley Baker: You know, I go back and forth about that because later on he really does struggle, you know, back and forth. Like initially I think, actually I think that that is how it would go for most people. So, when I'm talking to people at festivals and I tell them what it's about, I ask them that question like, "Would you do it?" And almost everyone says, "Yes, absolutely. If it's for my kid, absolutely." Like, everyone says that, right? And I think that is kind of a knee-jerk response for most parents.
But then the way that it's written and I think the way that it would play out in real life is that yes, maybe initially you might agree to that, but then would come all of the nuances and the morality and the, you know, religious connotations. So I think it's a quick yes, but not without really ruminating on the back end. And I think that's probably true for most people.
Ross Gericke: Yeah, you're right. He agrees immediately and in his mind starts to plan, but then when he starts to go watch the house, it starts to weigh on him in a different kind of way once it starts to become more real.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Yes. And I think that would probably be how it would be too, is that there's a difference a lot of times between hypothetical and then personal. And I see that a lot too just with risk assessment and things like that, that we as psychologists take into account all the time, like how tangible is this plan? How likely is this plan?
And so I do think that that is a huge difference when it goes from being kind of ruminating, in-your-head fantasy versus real life. And so, yeah, that was the distinction I tried to make is once you're actually following through and learning and watching, that's when it probably would start to get heavy, I would think.
Ross Gericke: So, judging by the intro that you wrote to the book that this book is kind of like a love letter of sorts to your dad, but it's a pretty dark love letter, right? So how does your relationship with your dad, and you kind of touched on this already, but how does that feature in this book?
Dr. Ashley Baker: Well, he's no longer with us, so I would hope that he would really like it. I think he would say I did it justice because it was actually extremely difficult to write. I had written a version of this before he passed, and the way that he passed, of course, was pretty traumatic where it was a homicide. And so, writing a character that was essentially him, it was a big cost.
I think for me with the grief of it, it was so bittersweet because it was like I wrote a piece of him in perpetuity, you know, but it's also extremely difficult for me to read The Ashes of Us because it is so very, very close to that. I mean, I know that all writers write from what they know, but it's pretty similar to kind of the person that he was. You know, not identical, but similar, I guess. And it was actually, it's funny because it was actually based on a true thing where at the end when I was a little girl, I saw this rat or whatever and I was like, "Kill it, kill it, kill it," and then when he removed it, then I cried and was like, “I can't believe you’d do that. What's your problem? Why would you do that?”
So that kind of premise is actually from real life, too. And a lot of the stuff – now, I am not Addison, that she's not me, but I do have a yellow rose tattoo. My dad did try to go like this and wipe it off. He did tell me I lost 10 IQ points for having a tattoo. So, yeah, there's lots of little family stuff in there.
Ross Gericke: As a reader, it's fun that that stuff is in there. I know, like you said, it came at a cost to you, but I think it I think it's worth it for us to experience. We get to experience a little bit of your dad in a way, you know, and that's kind of fun.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Oh, yeah. And he was such a big music buff, you know. I confuse people all the time because he had such varied, varied music tastes that my genres are really messed up. Like I have Motown from the 60s. I am a Bruce Springsteen, you know, girl. I love Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler. Oh my gosh. So there's a lot of that in there too, which to me is cool because I kind of like those instances of dropping in pop culture references. As a reader, I like when Stephen King does that a lot. Now, he does it so much better than me, but I like it. So, I tried to kind of emulate that.
Ross Gericke: It's funny that you mentioned that because I actually like tried to make a list of all of your music references as I was reading. I just gave up at a certain point. There was so many. I mean, yeah, you got Springsteen, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, Willie Nelson, The Beatles, Blondie, The Supremes. It went on and on and on and on. So, I enjoyed all of that stuff. It was fun to read about.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, music has its own soundtrack, too. And so to be able to put drops of that in there is fun. Yeah.
Ross Gericke: Yeah, the book version of a needle drop, right? Like they do in the movies.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Yeah, that's right. That's right.
Ross Gericke: So, if I'm not mistaken, the book is set in 2004. Is that right? I was trying to figure out the time frame. Which I hate to think of as a period piece, but I guess it kind of is. You know, like I don't like to think of 2004 as a long time ago, but why did you choose to set it about 20 or so years in the past?
Dr. Ashley Baker: Well that's when I was at App State so all the references are pretty accurate because that's when I was at college at Appalachian State. So Klondike and those places, jumping in the duck pond, like all of that was very me at Appalachian State back then.
Yeah. So, it made the references connect. And then also just as a writer, and this is such a cheat code, I guess, but I don't like writing modern books because of cell phones, right? Like that was a huge part of this story was that none of this would work if we have Wi-Fi, cell phones, like none of it. So it's really, really hard for me to write modern books because I feel like technology ruins all my plot points. So yeah, that was purposeful.
Ross Gericke: I like Stephen King a lot too. I read a lot of horror novels. And Horror really struggled for a while with cell phones. So much of it needs people to not be able to communicate with each other rapidly. You're right. It changes everything.
Dr. Ashley Baker: It does. It does. It would have – you know, CCTV – it wouldn't have worked. He would have been caught immediately. A ring doorbell – he would have been caught immediately. So like it really can't be now, which is probably a good thing, right? That the world’s just safer.
Ross Gericke: Yeah, it's for the best. But, you know, as far as fiction goes, like, you know, it must be a challenge.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Yeah, it is. It is. Even the novel I'm currently writing is not in present time either. I just, I don't know, I don't know if I'll ever be able to do that.
Ross Gericke: Well, that was a great transition because that is literally my next question on my list is: “Are you working on any future novels?”
Dr. Ashley Baker: So yes, I have two. I have A Mind Half Lost [which] is the tentative title. And it's about – one of my other pet peeves is that with mental illness everyone has a trajectory. You don't just become, you know, insane or even symptomatic, right? Everything has a narrative, and it really kind of perturbs me in a lot of the books I read where you don't see that trajectory. As a psychologist, absolutely you do, and that's why my job is fascinating is because, you know, people are predictable for the most part so you can anticipate outcomes right, but in fiction a lot of the way that mental illness is depicted is very sudden, like Snapped that TV show, you know, and that's not accurate at all, so I wanted to show the trajectory both the past and present of someone who is mentally ill. It switches between then and now. So you see the symptoms but then in the very next chapter you see the explanation for why that exists. And I just thought well that's a really good allegory for how mental illness really is.
Then the other one I'm writing is a ghost story. I promised my kids I would write them a ghost story. They have gotten to read anything that I've written because it's not appropriate. So they told me, “Write me a ghost story” and so I am in the works of that as well. So that would be I guess book four but we’ll see.
Ross Gericke: That sounds awesome. That gives me a couple of things to look forward to. Well, we'll keep an eye out for your future books and thank you for coming on the podcast.
Dr. Ashley Baker: Thank you so much and thanks for reading. Thanks for hosting. I am such a fan of public libraries. I think they are filled with the most hardworking book sellers, book lovers that exist, and in Forsyth especially, our libraries are amazing: the programming, what you guys offer, how dedicated you are. I mean, I just can't say thanks enough, just as a community member. You guys really do such amazing work in just keeping things running and all the activities that you offer. So, I'm so thankful.
Ross Gericke: Thank you, Ashley. It's been awesome.
Outro
Ross Gericke: Thank you for listening to the October 2025 episode of Unreadable.
Please subscribe to our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Contact the podcast directly with any comments by email at Unreadable@forsythpl.org
Keep up with all the excitement happening each month on our interactive calendar available on our website, www.forsythpl.org. You can also stay connected with the library through Facebook and Instagram @FOCOlibrary.
Our theme music is “Open Those Bright Eyes” composed by Kevin MacLeod. This and other compositions by Kevin MacLeod are available at Incompetech.com
I’m Ross Gericke, and this podcast has been Unreadable.
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