Ezra's Bookshelf

Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver · 651 pages · ~12 hrs

FictionHealth & MedicineSociety & Culture

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Barbara Kingsolver transposes Charles Dickens's 'David Copperfield' to the mountains of southern Appalachia, following Damon Fields—'Demon Copperhead'—from a trailer at birth to foster homes, football stardom, addiction, and beyond. Born to a single mother in a region ravaged by opioids, Demon narrates his own story in a voice both wry and tender. Kingsolver, who grew up in rural Kentucky and has written about Appalachia throughout her career, brings documentary knowledge of the foster care system and the pharmaceutical industry's role in the opioid epidemic. But this is a novel, not a polemic: Demon is a fully realized character whose choices and circumstances interweave in ways that resist simple moralization. The Dickensian parallels run throughout—there are equivalents of the Murdstones, of Steerforth, of Agnes—but Kingsolver transforms them into distinctly American figures. The book works as social novel, as adventure story, and as meditation on resilience. Kingsolver's love for her setting and her characters comes through on every page, even as she depicts cruelty and institutional failure. This is a major American novel that brings visibility to communities often caricatured or ignored.

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