Undeniably, the book can be challenging to read and, frankly, it is not going to suit everyone. As Damon observes, “Most families would sooner forgive you for going to prison than for moving out of Lee County.” They generously share what they have while they navigate their own challenges. But the Peggots provide Damon with a kind of extended family, offering acceptance and even affection to a boy who longs to be loved. From too young an age, Damon realizes this, too. Peggot keeps an eye on things at the trailer, knowing, as she does, that Damon’s mother isn’t capable of taking care of herself, let alone a child. Damon lives with his drug-addicted mother in a single-wide trailer owned by the Peggot family, who lives across the road. The man was long gone before the boy was born. Copperhead refers to his flaming red hair, which is about the only thing his father gave him. Kingsolver’s dedication in the book reads: “For the survivors.”ĭamon Fields, aka “Demon Copperhead,” is one of these children, and he provides the eloquent and frequently humorous voice of this story. But with each unfolding chapter, the connection between the two brings home the fact that, more than 150 years later, there are still clever, self-reliant young people who must defy their circumstances simply to live. One needn’t have read Dickens to appreciate Kingsolver’s novel, as the book stands well on its own. But rather than Victorian England, Kingsolver sets her tale in contemporary Appalachia. Hers is another story about a boy who struggles against unimaginable odds in the midst of a community that regularly fails him, a boy who not only survives but achieves a measure of success. Taken from Dickens’ “David Copperfield,” the quote might be viewed as a challenge: Kingsolver does recall the past as she gives us a contemporary retelling of Dickens’ 19th-century classic. Bestselling novelist Barbara Kingsolver opens her latest release, “Demon Copperhead,” with a quote from Charles Dickens: “It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.”
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