Demon Copperhead

Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead is equal parts compelling and truly difficult to read. I mostly read at night before turning off the light to go to sleep. I'd get to the end of a chapter and would turn to the next chapter... and next another. But then the next day I had to force myself to pick up the book again. I wanted to see where she was taking the story, but I almost really didn't. Very conflicting feelings.

The subject matter is very difficult. Damon Fields is born to a single mother in Virginia, in the heart of Appalachia in the 1980s. His father died several months prior to his birth at a place called the Devil's Bathtub. As a result, Damon was always afraid of bathtubs. His mother was a poor struggling teen living in a single-wide trailer on the property of an older couple who are responsible for raising their grandson since his father is gone and his mother is in prison. Such is the life in Appalachia.

Damon is nicknamed Demon and his Copperhead comes from the vibrant color of his hair. (There's also some legend told about a copperhead snake, but that is debatable.) This is his story. It includes an abusive stepfather, time in foster care, child labor, star athlete, unrequited love, addiction, and then the kind of love that drags a person down. There was also a little bit of hope.

Reading about the foster care system and the addiction of all types of people was difficult to get through. Foster parents who took in kids for the money. Or for slave labor. Or for whatever their agenda was.

I've mentioned Renee's Reading Club, a Faebook group, before. That group is solely for recommendations. There's also an RRC discussion group where you can discuss books after you finish them or as you're reading them. Spoilers are allowed. After I finished reading this novel, I went to the discussion group and wrote my observations about the book and how I think living in a rural area with lots of poverty gave me a different perspective than had I stayed in my little metro-NYC area bubble. In the book, Demon has a running commentary about what he thinks about large cities (the word large being relative since he's mostly talking about Knoxville, Tennessee) and how city folk think about people in rural America. Kingsolver lives in Appalachia so she knows what she's talking about.

I'd love for my community book club to read and discuss Demon Copperhead. We're all transplants here from somewhere, and I'd like to see if they feel they have more of a connection to the setting in the novel after having lived here. This would make a great book club book.

Would I recommend this one? It's very  difficult to read, but if you can read it, it will force you to think about some of the uglier things in life which need to be addressed and not ignored.