First of all, Pulitzer Prize-winner Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel Demon Copperhead is not about a snake as the title would suggest. It’s a modern interpretation of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield retold about a drug-addicted teenage boy. His name is a riff on his first name, Damon, and his distinctive red hair. What shocked me most about this amazing book is how different this story is from Kingsolver’s earlier novel, The Poisonwood Bible. It is a credit to the author’s brilliant writing skills that she was so beautifully and naturally able to inhabit the voice of the main character and create an entire world around his bizarre life.

The author is a native of the Appalachian mountain area of the southeastern United States and the book is set in Tennessee. It is a story about the disadvantaged residents of this part of the country and how they have been unfairly affected by poverty and prejudice, and further subjected to destruction by the availability of addictive substances. One of the characters in Demon Copperhead describes this social breakdown as being divided along city versus country lines. “He said up home we are land economy people, and city is money economy.”  The author goes on to explain the intrinsic difference between city people and Appalachian country people. She knows. She lives there.

Poor communities are particularly vulnerable to seeking relief from the daily stresses of life through escapism. That may involve alcohol, drugs, mental illness and any number of other ways of easing the pain. The young Demon was one such victim. The story begins with his birth which was difficult and unconventional. Despite the challenges, he was intelligent and buried deep within his troubled psyche he possessed a good heart. He understood the difference between good and bad although he was not always able to exercise the best option because of his circumstances.

Demon enters the foster care system at a young age and is subjected to the brutalities of trying to survive in a series of environments that are neither caring nor supportive. The children are exploited and often treated as slave labour. It is no wonder they seek out any kind of relief from their difficult circumstances. Demon is stronger than most and finds temporary redemption in high school football—until he is injured. Kingsolver’s metaphors are true to the vocabulary of a teenage boy. “The bones inside my knee were grinding like a bad transmission.”

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. I absolutely loved every single page. In fact, instead of downloading it from the library, I ordered a paperback from Amazon because it’s a hefty book and I wasn’t sure I would be able to finish it in the allotted twenty-one days.

It also reminded me of another great book I read a few years ago, Shuggy Bain by Booker Prize finalist Douglas Stuart, about a similarly disadvantaged boy living in modern-day Glasgow, Scotland. For those of us who had the good fortune to grow up in two-parent homes with only the normal day-to-day challenges of any family, books like this are eye-opening. It serves us well to be reminded of the difficulties so many children face when they did not ask to be born and landed in difficult circumstances through no fault of their own.

If you decide to give Demon Copperhead a try, I suggest that after you’ve finished it and taken a break, check out Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart. Both books will leave the reader with a greater understanding and sympathy for the struggles of young boys and girls born into circumstances they did not choose but were doomed to endure. These two books will definitely up your empathy quotient.

If you are unable to obtain Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver or Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart at your local bookstore or library, please click on the links to have it delivered directly to your door or tablet from Amazon.

(Disclosure: I may receive a teeny, tiny commission while you are assured of Amazon’s best price.  Thank, you.)