Demon Copperhead

Summary

Transposing Dickens's "David Copperfield" to the Appalachian mountains of southern Virginia, the novel follows a sharp, resilient boy born into rural poverty as he moves through foster homes, football fields, and the wreckage of the opioid epidemic. Kingsolver matches Dickens's first-person voice with a contemporary vernacular alive to regional speech and shame. The book is an angry, tender argument for the people too often written off as flyover country.