Demon Copperhead

by Barbara Kingsolver

Demon Copperhead was born on the floor of the bathroom in a rented trailor to an 18 year old drug addict in Lee County VA. He was named Damon Field. He didn’t know he was poor and his childhood was fine due to the help of the family next door and his best friend Maggot who lived with the Peggot family.

It’s an excellent book that follows this poor kid through his incredible life. When he is a school kid his mom marries an abusive man who encourages his mother’s use of drugs and is abusive to Damon. Everything blows up and his mother is forced into rehab, her husband is no where to be found leaving the child alone. Poor Damon, who is now called Demon heads into the foster care system.

We follow him into one abusive situation after another. Western Virginia, part of Appalachia is desperately poor. But Demon gets through it. He desides he can’t take it anymore, goes to find his father’s mother, who he has never met, and lives in Murder Valley, Tennessee. He hitchhikes there with all his savings from his part time job. It is the saddest part of the book. But he does finally find his grandmother, and luckily he looks exactly like his father so she takes him in. She is very well off and smart and apparently is a Godsend to orphans. She makes arrangements for him to live with her son-in-law and granddaughter back in Virginia.

His life changes for the better. He is smart and his new foster father is the Coach of the High School team and Demon earns his name due to his talent for football. Unfortunately, the rest of the book, and actually the real theme, shows the rampant pharmaceutical drug abuse that has taken over the poor rural states in Appalachia.

I recommend this book because Kingsolver is an excellent writer. The book is entertaining. The characters are real and unique. The story gives you joy and sadness. But it also reports on how the opioid epidemic brought on by the big Pharmaceutical companies and busy Doctors took over the poor and uneducated, young and old people in the poverty stricken rural South.

Poor Demon goes through so much heartache and yet comes out healed in the end. I recommend this book because its characters are very real and distinct. There is joy and desperate sadness, but its important to know this story and to see how it resolves.