Inspired by David Copperfield, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead supplants nightmarish 19th childhoods with 21st Century realities that would curl Dickens’ toes.
Demon was born to a single teen mom who lacked the foresight to see the name her little redheaded boy would inevitably be stuck with when she named him Damon. That was the least of her bad decisions.
Demon survives his brutal stepfather but his drug-addled mother does not. Swept into foster care at eleven, his first stop is a small tobacco farm run by an old man who expects hard labor in exchange for meager meals and a threadbare existence.
At thirteen he’s living in a laundry room that was used for breeding puppies. His new deadbeat foster father needs the monthly five hundred bucks from the county to cover his own family’s living expenses so the first thing he asks the boy is, ‘how you gonna pay for your room and board?’ Demon ends up working after school and weekends at a junk yard that’s a cover for a meth lab.
He eventually runs away. Trouble finds him quickly, leaving him broke and sleeping behind dumpsters. His luck finally turns when he manages to find the destination he had in mind when he set out, the town where his father is buried. The more important discovery in that town is the grandmother who had turned her back on Demon’s mom just after he was born. Unaware that he'd been orphaned, she vows to make things right.
In the introduction to this compelling novel, Kingsolver warns us about the dire reality of Demon’s world. “He grew out of a real place where I live, the mountains of southern Appalachia . . . he bears some of the same scars a lot of us carry around . . . But his damage runs deeper. This beautiful place has a history of poverty, and lately has been devasted by the opioid epidemic.”
When, thanks to his grandmother, Demon is finally in a home where people care about him, blossoming into a high school football star, we know his good fortune cannot last. We just don’t know how bad the crash is going to be. Everything changes when the team doctor prescribes oxycontin after a vengeful tackler busts up Demon’s knee.
The years that follow are not pretty. Demon should be celebrating homecoming, escorting his girlfriend to prom, enjoying his athletic prowess and the artistic talent he’s nurtured since childhood. Instead, he’s barely surviving. His opioid addiction forces him into the lifestyle of a teen dropout, limping from one bad job to the next to support his and his girlfriend’s drug habit.
We learn that opioid producers like Purdue relied on extensive population profiling data to single out poor rural communities like Lee County Virginia. Knowing them to be vulnerable they sent their best drug salesman, offering gifts and in incentives to healthcare providers while telling them, ‘this is a miracle drug that is perfectly safe, non-addictive and the best pain reliever ever made.’
Lee County, where Demon Copperhead grew up, is definitely vulnerable. It’s coal mining country where most of the jobs were taken over by machines, leaving behind poverty and disability.
We also learn that back when the coal mines needed workers, they controlled the school boards so they could make sure that education was never good enough to give the young generations much of an opportunity to leave. On top of that, they suffer collectively from a poor self-image. They’re proud and angry at the same time, about being labeled hillbillies and rednecks by the rest of the world. Both attitudes give them a dim view of their prospects.
It’s difficult to suffer through Demon’s downward spiral into addiction and all the tragedies that surround it. Kingsolver does not hold back. You begin to feel like one of the locals – like the high school art teacher who takes Demon under her wing. From Chicago, travelling the south after college, she and her husband fell in love with the bluegrass music and the natural beauty of Lee County but stayed for the people. They suffer with them but keep believing.
Like the art teacher, we get to enjoy the rays of sunshine at the end of this astoundingly rich novel. Barbara Kingsolver does Dickens proud.