“Demon Copperhead” reimagines Dickens’s story in a modern-day rural America contending with poverty and opioid addiction
Damon Fields is an orphan with nothing but his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair. Damon will brave the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
Geek Rate: Sky god Worthy (5 out of 5 stars). Fun, heartbreaking, and too long, in “Demon Copperhead,” author Barbara Kingsolver puts a spotlight on some of the dark ills of our society through the eyes of an unlikely teenage hero. It is the story of a new generation of lost boys who just want to be found.
Barbara Kingsolver retells Charles Dickens’s “David Copperfield” in her signature political and social commentary style of writing. In “Demon Copperhead,” Kingsolver proves once again that books can still pave the way to changing our society.
“Demon Copperhead” is not just a simple retelling of Dicken’s beloved novel. Kingsolver wrote her story looking through the lenses of the present time, delving into the ills that plague America.
“There’s no more blood here to give, just war wounds. Madness. A world of pain, looking to be killed.”
The novel’s setting is in the 90s and the lead character Damon Fields introduces himself by telling his story from even before he was born to a teenage mother with a drug addiction. He was named Demon due to his attitude, and the “Copperhead” comes from his hair color. The first few chapters, like most novels, tend to be a bore. I wondered why the author wanted to explain all of this. It made the introduction too long, and some readers might give up after a few pages. But this adds to the depth of Damon’s story. And from here, the novel gathers momentum.
Demon becomes an orphan at an early age, but not before experiencing physical abuse from his stepfather. He then becomes a ward of the state. As do most orphans, he was transferred from various foster care families, where he experienced child labor (working in a meth lab/garbage collection warehouse and in a tobacco farm). The moment he lost his mother was deeply moving, as well as his ordeal with his stepfather Stoner. His quest to find out his father’s story leads him to Betsy Woodall, his paternal grandmother, but not before Kingsolver subjects Demon to a harrowing journey to reach her.
“That good family, facing a coffin in wonder at God’s failed mercy. ”
The days when he experienced hunger, the dramatization of the horrors of working in a tobacco field, and the sorry state of the farm owner’s house, were so vividly relayed that readers can feel and see it through Kingsolver’s words.
In Damon’s every experience, Kingsolver manages to place the readers into the mind of a teenage boy and his point of view of the world: the struggling family who wants him, a child, to contribute financially; the pain of not being enough to be adopted; the horrors of American roads.
“Here, all we can ever be is everything we’ve been.”
His friendships with various characters also added color to the story. From his childhood friend Maggot, we find out about his love of Marvel superheroes and his sketching skills. With June Peggot, Maggot’s cousin, readers are introduced to his first love. There’s also Angus, the daughter of the local football coach who adopted him.
This brief life with the coach, living in a huge house, and being a football star feels like a dream and a transition from the hardships that pulled down most novels of this kind where readers might fall into depression with ceaseless unfortunate events.
“A good story doesn’t just copy life, it pushes back on it”
But front and center in the novel is drug addiction. At this stage in the story, Kingsolver had another great venue to discuss this social ill alongside rural poverty and the issues in public education, health care, and child welfare in America. Demon, after suffering from a fatal injury, succumbed to various drugs such as Oyxtocin, the one that killed his mother. It’s also in this part where the story plateaued. Demon is deeply in love and can’t escape his severe addiction (the two go hand-in-hand). The story is then stuck and the narration that follows feels like stretching it too far.
There’s a redemption arc but the optimistic message will likely fail to make a dent to a tired reader. But at its core, “Demon Copperhead” asks the readers their definition of a hero. And if simply surviving can make you one.
“That ache was an old, old story and it wasn’t ending”
Reignell Francisco
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