Carolyn Walsh 's Reviews > Demon Copperhead

The excellent cover design first drew me to this book. I thought a modern adaptation of the classic David Copperfield would be a formidable task. When I saw it was written by Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote three of my favourite books, all wildly different in theme and location, The Poisonwood Bible, The Lacuna, and Flight Behaviour, I knew I wanted to purchase and read this. This is unlike her other books that enthralled me. It is an epic tale (over 600 pages) and a fabulous read. Its characters, the good, the wicked, the uncaring, and the disinterested, will stay in my memory for a long time.

Demon (Damon) Copperhead was born to a teenage, addicted mother on the floor of her trailer. They faced extreme poverty in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. The story follows Demon from his birth to young manhood. The writing is exquisite, although describing dark and disturbing circumstances. Demon narrates his life story, often with a sardonic sense of humour about deplorable situations. His father died before his birth, and Demon inherited his father's good looks and flaming red hair (Copperhead). His mother remarried a vile, abusive, violent man. Kindly neighbours, the Piggotts, were an early refuge for him, and the family also cared for other orphaned or forgotten children from dead or absent relatives.

At age ten, Demon finds himself in the foster system when his mother dies. The system's workers were overburdened and usually uncaring, overlooking terrible situations where they placed their charges. He finds himself working on a farm with several orphaned boys, treated as slave labour, poisoned by the sap from tobacco plants, and nearly starved. Then he is moved to the McCobbs, sleeping in a dog's room, and expected to earn money by working outside the home to supplement the family's income. He rarely can attend school, and when he does, it reinforces his low self-esteem. Always hungry and poorly dressed, he is shunned by his classmates. He works in the trash after school and seldom is clean.

Things start to look better when he moves into the home of a football coach who is determined to make a football player out of Demon for his winning team. He feels unworthy even in his short glory days as a football player. A painful injury on the sports field ends his brief football career and starts him on pain medication and the road to addiction. He becomes friends with Angus, the coach's teenager.

Demon becomes reacquainted with an old friend from the miserable farm where they both laboured. This friend works for a local newspaper laying out ads and cartoon strips. Demon helps him by creating a superhero from the Appalachian region, as all the superheroes are drawn with their exploits in cities. The cartoon strip became very popular and is syndicated to other regional papers. One kindly art teacher recognizes Demon's talent for drawing cartoons and supports his efforts.

However, things are going badly for Demon outside the newspaper office. He has married a girl he thinks is adorable. She is clingy and needy, will not cook or clean the house, and appliances have long stopped functioning. They live in filthy, nasty conditions, and she has fallen deep into drug addiction. She becomes distraught and angry if he leaves home to run errands or go to work. His memories of earlier injustices and poverty flood his mind and emotions with despair.

His old friends are now part of the opioid and meth crisis, and Demon joins them. His best friend from the Piggott home is far into drugs and weird Gothic dress, and he and the once popular QB football hero are dealing. Former friends start dying from overdoses and reckless behaviour. Are there any supportive people who will save some of the addicted youth? Will Demon find a way out of his tragic past?

We learn something about the region's history, the coal mining, those impoverished, marginalized people scorned by others and designated hillbillies and rednecks. ( a word with an interesting origin),
and with social situations little improved since the time of Charles Dickens.
Demon comments on David Copperfield, one of the few books he managed to read in school, " The Charles Dickens one seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over, and nobody gives a rat's ass. You'd think he was from around here."

Highly recommended!