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BOOKS I READ: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2022). Young Damon Fields’ trailer-park life takes a turn for the worst when his mother overdoses and dies. He was already in a foster home after his mom’s previous bender. He’s a Melungeon—mixed-race Appalachians—with red hair. Soon enough, his nickname is Demon Copperhead.
Demon runs away to look for his father’s family, who died without knowing his son. He finds a grandmother who gets him on a different path, one living with the high school football coach and his daughter Angus. He joins the football team when he reaches high school, becoming a star tight end, until he is injured badly by an opposing lineman. The narcotics he is given to soothe his knee pain leaves him addicted and unmoored, his world starts unraveling again.
Barbara Kingsolver’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield is set in Lee County, Virginia where mining used to dominate. It’s mostly gone, and the remnants are thoroughly broken. Demon attempts to rise above it all, sometimes with success, sometimes falling in deeper. He’s like an insect in a washbowl as the water heads down the drain, sometimes he can reach to basin for a short reprieve.
Barbara Kingsolver received the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Demon Copperhead.
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