“First, I got myself born...” It was an inauspicious beginning for Damon Fields, born on “...the dog breath air of late summer and fall...” to a drug addicted mother while she was passed out on the floor of her trailer, Damon half out while still encased in her placenta — the medically correct term for the far less delicate one his mother would use.
If you haven’t yet read “Demon Copperhead,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, essayist and poet Barbara Kingsolver, now would be the perfect time to add it to your summer reading list. Published in 2022, the novel has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2023. It also continues Kingsolver’s remarkable track record; all of her books published since 1993, beginning with the novel “Pigs in Heaven,” have made it to the New York Times Best Seller list.
His birth name soon morphed into what Kingsolver also chose as the title of her novel, Damon’s late father being known as Copperhead thanks to his coppery red hair and the snake tattoo he sported on his arm where he had been bitten twice, and “Demon” for reasons that soon become apparent.
Kingsolver also chose Damon Fields’ new moniker as a reference to “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens, published in serialized form in the mid 19th century and then as a novel. Structurally, the two have more than their share of similarities. Like the arc of “David Copperfield,” “Demon Copperhead” is a coming of age tale that focuses on the moral and spiritual growth of its main character as he moves from birth to maturity.
The narrative structure has similarities as well, as the story of both Copperfield and Copperhead are told in the first person by the main characters. Dickens chose to set Copperfield in Victorian England, a time and place he knew well. Kingsolver, raised in rural Kentucky, set Copperhead in the coal country of Appalachia.
It’s clearly an environment she knows well, skillfully evoking the languid natural beauty and soul deadening poverty of the countryside, set in contrast to relentless hustle and flow of city life.
And, like Dickens, her talent for bringing her characters to life with an economy of words shines throughout, like her description of one of a string of Demon’s foster parents, Mr. Crickson; “Crickson was a big, meaty guy with a red face and a greasy comb-over like fingers palming a basketball...”
Following along with Demon’s narration of his odyssey is heartbreaking more times than not. At one point he laments that “...being a long way from home isn’t really a problem if you don’t have one.” This from an 11-year-old boy determined to survive dire circumstances while relentlessly searching for a home, a sense of connection, his place in the world.
The odds are not in Demon’s favor, not simply because of bad choices and the onus of “hillbilly” culture, as posited in “Hillbilly Elegy,” J.D. Vance’s best-selling 2016 memoir. In a sense, one could view Kingsolver’s novel as her corrective to “Elegy.” Time and again, through Demon’s telling of his story, she makes clear the devastating effect that Big Pharma’s aggressive promotion of opoids to a vulnerable population, the mass migration from rural areas to the cities, and the denigration of the people who remain throughout popular culture (“hillbilly,” “yokel”) and by one politician (“deplorables”).
In Dickens’ novel, David Copperfield’s hard-knock journey resolves with the breakthrough achievement of his vocation as a successful novelist. Not exactly so with Demon Copperhead, but (a bit of a spoiler alert here) don’t rush to bet against his intelligence, creativity and determination to survive.
Join our readers whose generous donations are making it possible for you to read our news coverage. Help keep local journalism alive and our community strong. Donate today.
