Theo Bennett★ Reader · Lv 2
todayKingsolver reworks David Copperfield into Appalachia and it's furious, funny, and unforgettable. Deserved the Pulitzer.
Fiction
Demon Copperhead
4.8· 753 ratings
Published 2022560 pagesEnglishSearing · Vivid
First, I got myself born.
Why read it
Born on the bathroom floor of a single-wide trailer to a teenage mother, a red-haired boy in the mountains of Appalachia narrates his own life with a survivor's wit, a life the foster system, the coal economy, and the opioid epidemic all seem determined to swallow.
The premise
Damon Fields, nicknamed Demon Copperhead, tells the story of a boy passed through foster homes, child labor, football fame, and addiction in the tobacco and coal country of southern Appalachia. A modern reworking of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield, the novel channels its hero's fierce voice to indict the institutions that fail rural poor children while insisting on their intelligence and worth.
The story behind it
Barbara Kingsolver has said she wrote the novel after sitting at Charles Dickens's desk and feeling encouraged to write about poverty and children in her own region. Published in 2022, Demon Copperhead won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (shared) and the Women's Prize for Fiction, becoming one of the most acclaimed American novels of the decade.
What awaits inside
- 01
Dickens in Appalachia
What awaits is David Copperfield transplanted to modern coal country, its orphan hero reborn with an unmistakably American voice.
- 02
The system that fails kids
Foster placements, unpaid farm labor, and neglect expose how the safety net becomes another trap.
- 03
The opioid tide
The arrival of prescription painkillers in the region turns injury and hope into addiction with devastating patience.
- 04
A voice that survives
Demon's humor and clear sight are the throughline, refusing to let his people be reduced to statistics.
From the book
Demon's account of his own birth on the trailer bathroom floor, still in the caul, narrated with startling wit.
His rise as a high-school football star cut short by an injury that introduces him to the painkillers that reshape his life.
4.8
753 ratings
5
547
4
203
3
3
2
0
1
0