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.

Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family and Forgiveness

 

Once again, when I read the blurb about Life From Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family and Forgiveness by Sasha Martin, I didn't read carefully enough. I thought it was going to be about the author trying to cook a dish from every cuisine worldwide. It turns out, that was the purpose of her writing a book. But that this book was about much, much more. It's about what drove her to even attempt such a project. Once I was about a quarter of the way into the book, I went back to goodreads to see what I'd misread. Turns out that the blurb really didn't give much information. So I started skimming the reviews. That's when I truly realized my mistake.

A few of the reviewers likened this to The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Only with food. I tend to agree. There were very many differences, but the vibe was the same. Kids neglected by mother (or parents), trying to come to terms with that while forging ahead in life. Unlike The Glass Castle, Life From Scratch resonated with me. In the past 30-something years of my life, food has played a much more important role than it did in the first 30-something years. Food can be a connection to others, a way to armchair travel, a way to express love.

Sasha and her brother Michael grew up with their single mom who marched to the beat of a different drummer. They were very poor, but because of their mom's creativity and quirkiness, they didn't even realize it. In their small nuclear family, food was important. Events were marked by food. The mom made sure that Sasha and her brother understood their Italian and Hungarian roots - through food.

For about two years, Sasha and Michael were bounced from one foster home to another when the "system" deemed their mom unfit to raise them. When Sasha was nine-years-old, the mom's best high school friend and her husband agree to become the kids' guardians. The family moved from Boston, where their home with their mother was, to Atlanta and eventually, after tragedy strikes, overseas. Sasha is physically and emotionally abandoned by her mother. She leads a troubled teenaged life and only seems content when she's in the kitchen cooking.

Sasha comes into a bit of money when she's at loose ends after college and she decides she's going to use half the money to go to the Culinary Institute of America. She leaves for the first summer to complete an internship in Tulsa and ends up staying in Tulsa and creating a new life. Only after Sasha and her husband have a baby does Sasha realize that food might hold the key to being able to truly move forward. That's when the idea of cooking herself around the world comes in.

When I realized that their was a blog that came before the memoir, off I was to explore the blog. It's called Global Table Adventure and if you are at all into cooking or ethnic foods, it's a worthwhile site to explore. There are some interesting recipes with some beautiful photographs, plus there's a little bit of story telling.

Another memoir this one reminded me of was The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels. Even though I enjoyed Life From Scratch and found The Pioneer Woman irritating. Whose table would I rather sit down to eat at? Sasha's. Hands down. But the same idea, figuring out how to move forward with your life with the help of food.

I'd recommend Life From Scratch.

The Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer

After completing The Child Called "It" by Dave Pelzer with so many questions, I immediately waitlisted myself for an e-copy of the second in his series, The Lost Boy. I was hoping I'd find the answers to my many questions.

Now that I've finished The Lost Boy, I have a few more questions. Since I suspect they won't be answered in the final book in this trilogy, I'll hold off requesting that one for awhile.

The Lost Boy gives a quick recap of Dave's life at home with his mother. And then picks up as he's being rescued and removed from his home and placed into the California foster care system.

I'm not sure if I didn't like the book because it didn't answer my questions or because at times I felt that Dave was too self-congratulatory. I did, however, appreciate reading about the good and the bad of Dave's experience as a foster child in California. I learned that at least during the time he was in foster care, his parents were both able to get in touch with him. Legally, however, he was not supposed to be getting in touch with his mother. That makes no sense since his mother was the one piling on the abuse.

Like the first book, this was a very quick read. And like the first book, it's going to take me some time to process all I've read.

Though I wasn't thrilled with the narrative, at the end of the book were acknowledgements, resources and then commentary from those that helped Dave on his journey from that of an abused child to a functioning, successful adult. I found these well-written, interesting and informative. As much as we often see that the foster care system is broken and we hear horrific stories of children in foster care being neglected - or foster children acting out and harming their foster parents, foster care can be a positive thing. It can be a very positive thing. It might not work perfectly, but often it can work. Things have changed so much from the time Dave was in foster care to the time when this second book was written to today. There have been advances in teacher training, in programs for foster families and the insight of social workers. It was nice to read some positive things since so often we only hear the bad stuff.

The fact remains that social workers are still overworked, it's often difficult to match the proper child to the appropriate foster home and many children still fall between the cracks. As I was reading, I could only imagine some of the discussion that we'd have in my community book club should we ever choose to discuss this book. We're a "Let's Try to Save the World" type of book club. We'd have our hands full with this book.

Would I recommend this book? I gave it three stars on Goodreads. I think I'd recommend it for a book club, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it for an individual to read without discussing. If any of you choose to read this book, I'll be happy to discuss it with you!