Demon Copperhead

"Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

The novel, which takes place in the southern Appalachian woods, centers on a little kid raised by a single mother in a single-wide trailer. The youngster's only possessions are the attractiveness and copper-colored hair of his deceased father, a sharp sense of humor, and a strong aptitude for survival. He braves the contemporary horrors of foster care, child labor, abandoned schools, athletic achievement, addiction, tragic loves, and heartbreaking losses in a tale that never stops, all told in his own merciless voice. He struggles with his own invisibility throughout it all in a world where even superheroes have turned their backs on rural residents in favor of urban areas.

Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield several centuries ago based on his own experience of institutional poverty and the harm it did to children in his community. We still don't have the answers to such issues. Although not required reading for anybody, Dickens served as the novel's inspiration. By adapting a Victorian epic book to the modern American South, Barbara Kingsolver draws on Dickens' rage, empathy, and—most importantly—his belief in the transformational power of a well-written narrative. A new generation of lost lads and all those born into stunning, cursed locations they can't conceive leaving behind are represented by Demon Copperhead.