Demon Copperhead

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 560 pages

 

Barbara Kingsolver’s 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a modern retelling of Charles Dicken’s David Copperhead except that it is set in Virginia’s southern Appalachian Mountains. However, Demon’s story makes David’s story read like a rom com it is so bleak. I’m surprised that neither Kingsolver nor Demon were suicidal.

 

The book starts at the beginning, with Demon’s birth, there on the bathroom floor of the single-wide trailer where he and his teenage mom live, surrounded by her drug paraphernalia. He arrives fully enclosed in the sac. According to the neighbor, that is a sure sign that the child, officially named Damon, will not die by water. Little comfort for the child as he grows up.

 

Demon’s dad is dead; his mom is a drug addict, but somehow, they manage. Life is hard, and the boy with copper-colored hair knows hunger and learns early how to scrounge. His mom tries, sort of. Thanks heavens for the neighbors, the Peggots.

 

Amazon reviewer Stephanie McCall wrote it best: “Barbara Kingsolver just plain nailed these characters, these settings, this life story of her modern, Appalachian David Copperfield. I not only felt for, but felt with and not only traveled with, but traveled inside, Demon all the way from his home next door to the Peggott's, to Creaky's farm, to the McCobb's, to Coach Winfield's and everywhere in between. I can't say every place and character was one I grew to love. I mean, come on, some of these people are downright cruel or downright creeps. But they were three-dimensional and I could at least understand them. And even the situations and scenes at which I cringed, left an impression on me.”

 

During scope of this novel, Demon ages from newborn to almost eighteen. He caught a break here and there, but not often. And when he did, it was heartbreaking when he lost it.

 

Kingsolver also does an amazing job in depicting the opioid crisis the dominates that part of the country.

 

Demon has one goal in life: To see the ocean. And each time he gets close, the proverbial rug is pulled out from under him.

 

This is one of those books that I could not stop reading, yet at times I had to put it down because it hurt too bad to read more. Demon Copperhead receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Utter Catastrophe

The Utter Catastrophe by Sandra Hutchison (Book 3 in the Lawson Trilogy) 400 pages

Hutchison has done it again; she has written a book that sweeps the reader into its fictional world!

In the third and final book (much to my dismay) of the Lawson Trilogy, the topics are much, much heavier—the opioid crisis, drug addiction and recovery—yet it is tempered by a romance.

It’s the summer of 2016. Winslow Jennings is now Lawson’s Chief of Police. He and the other chiefs in the nearby small towns are overwhelmed with drug-related deaths. Winslow doesn’t realize it, but the crisis is about to hit home.

Everyone in Lawson has noted that Winslow’s cousin, Dave Cantwell, and Dave’s wife, Peggy, have been acting strange. They seldom leave the house anymore, don’t interact with their old friends or their extended family. It’s been a bad year for them with Dave hurting his back at work. But they still manage to make it work. Or so they thought.

The Cantwell’s have three children: Megan, Mike and Zach. Megan, twenty-one and just home from college, has noticed that her parents were acting stranger than usual, but she shrugged it off as to her being away. When they overdose in a nearby town after making a buy, it is up to Megan to become the adult. Mike is in Afghanistan and Zach is a middle-schooler.

As Megan tries to sort out her parents’ financial affairs and save their farm, there is another problem looming on the horizon. Seems her first, and only so far, love, Noah, is back in Lawson. He has recently been discharged from a rehab center and is home to bury his wife and raise his daughter. But can Noah say clean? Megan still has feelings for him, but it would not be smart to get involved with a drug addict.

At times, “The Utter Catastrophe” was a tough book to read, but Hutchison managed it with compassion. I really liked that Hutchison focused on those left behind to clean up the mess(es) and muddle their way through life instead on the addicts themselves, and how they could not get off that road.

I also like that Winslow and Mary did not take center stage in this chapter, but they were strong supporting characters. The Somali refugee family (whose names I can no longer recall) are also supporting characters who help to frame the story of a small town in big trouble,

“The Utter Catastrophe” is another 5-star read in Julie’s world!