Chandler Baker. Photo by Carol Toler.
New York Times bestselling author Chandler Baker has a knack for writing fiction aimed at young women juggling families and careers. Reese Witherspoon thought so when she selected Whisper Network, Baker’s first adult novel, for her book club and optioned it for a TV series. Good Morning America’s book club thought so, too, when they selected her second book, The Husbands.
Baker grew up in Lake Highlands, attending Merriman Park Elementary until her family moved to Florida. She later went to law school at the University of Texas and began practicing in Fort Worth. But when she was young, she and a friend made a pact. The friend pledged to run a marathon, and Baker vowed to write a book. Both finished their tasks, and Baker was hooked. She never stopped writing, publishing five young adult novels by the time she was 30.
Baker’s newest book is Cutting Teeth, and her first appearance on release day was at Book People in Austin. Her second stop? She sat down with members of Lake Highlands Women’s League Book Club before attending a signing event at Interabang Bookstore in Dallas.
Cutting Teeth is set in a tony preschool in Texas, where the beloved teacher has turned up dead and detectives want permission to question the four-year-olds. Are they witnesses to the gruesome crime? Are they suspects? And what does it mean that the cherubic children have recently taken to biting — for blood?
“I get the ideas for my books in a couple of different ways, but, for me, the social commentary aspect is an important part of what makes a Chandler Baker book,” she told LHWL Book Club members. “A lot of times I will find that, subconsciously, I laid clues in books I wrote before. I’d been thinking about a passage I wrote in The Husbands. The main character, Nora, is thinking, instead of adding more and more to her plate, it would almost be easier if she could just offer her husband and child a thigh or a shoulder — as long as they don’t ask for seconds. It sounds very dark, but that’s kind of my deal.”
People Magazine says Cutting Teeth is “Jaw-dropping…A darkly comic send-up of motherhood.” Kirkus Book Reviews calls it “Gruesome, funny, jam-packed, sharp as baby teeth.” Ashley Audrain, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Push, says, “With devourable writing and pitch-perfect humor, Cutting Teeth is a sharp, original, wickedly astute look at the sting of modern motherhood.”
Cutting Teeth is unlike any book Chandler has written before, and publishers didn’t exactly beat a path to her door — at first.
“I knew what I meant in my head, which was not a super-dark book, but light, satirical and humorous. Once I finished it and turned it in, my editor and publisher loved it and threw their support behind it.”
You can find Cutting Teeth wherever books are sold.
Chandler Baker visits Lake Highlands Women’s League.
LHWL Book Club has read all three of Baker’s adult titles.
