Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

SYNOPSIS: A modern-day David Copperfield, DEMON COPPERHEAD, follows Demon Copperhead throughout his youth and young adult years living in Lee County, Virginia. From birth to foster care to high school football stars and beyond, we watch Demon navigate a world filled with love, longing, and a search for family.

One reader said, “I finished this a few weeks ago, and I’m still worried about Demon.” Me too.

I CAN’T GET DEMON OUT OF MY HEAD AND HEART. A story that will break your heart and leave you hoping; you’ll also navigate the opioid crisis and all the casualties that come with it through the eyes of a funny, quick, direct, and lively narrator. I finished Demon Copperhead and had to sit on my couch and cry. I cried for the love of a character and the devastation of a story so well told by Barbara Kingsolver that it sticks to your cells and becomes a new fabric of your being.

Demon Copperhead is not only an incredible work of fiction, but it serves as a political commentary on the Appalachian region and the hardships its community endures. Reading it, I was reminded of Dave Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, and were it to ever have a soundtrack, ARKAI would be the best background music for each scene.

Dickens would have been proud of this rendition of his time-tested story. I can’t help but think he, too, thinks Demon a worthy narrator to something the world needs more of in this modern age.

A well deserved 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner, DEMON COPPERHEAD keeps you engaged (and enraged and laughing) from beginning to end. I’ve even thought to immediately re-read it all over again...I’m so in love with it, and it’s characters.