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.