Demon Copperhead
"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose." Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves 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. Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative
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What you might want to know about Demon Copperhead
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Born on the floor of a single-wide trailer in southern Virginia to a teenage mother, redheaded Damon Fields, called Demon Copperhead, narrates his way through bad placements, football, and an opioid epidemic.
Yes. Demon Copperhead won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, sharing the award with Hernan Diaz's Trust. It also won the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Yes. Barbara Kingsolver wrote Demon Copperhead as a modern Appalachian reimagining of Charles Dickens's David Copperfield. The plot beats and character arcs follow Dickens closely, transposed to rural Virginia during the opioid crisis.
The novel is fiction, but Kingsolver drew on extensive research and lived experience in southern Appalachia. The opioid epidemic, foster care system, and economic conditions depicted reflect real events, though the characters and specific events are invented.
The first-person Appalachian voice takes a few chapters to settle into, but the prose is otherwise accessible. The subject matter, including child abuse, addiction, and poverty, is heavy and may be harder emotionally than stylistically.
Demon Copperhead was written by Barbara Kingsolver, published in 2022 by Harper.
Demon Copperhead is 560 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Demon Copperhead takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
Demon Copperhead is a standalone novel by Barbara Kingsolver, not part of a series.
Demon Copperhead is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
