Book Bearings
Cover of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Demon Copperhead

  • 560 pages · about 9 hours
  • First published 2022
  • 11 editions

Bookshop.org links may earn us a commission. It supports independent bookstores and costs you nothing.

1 About this book

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

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours.

Good for readers who want: a coming-of-age story, literary fiction, and a long read.

  • Coming of age
  • Literary fiction
  • Mothers
  • Death
  • Orphans
  • Poverty
  • Teenage boys
  • Small Town & Rural

2 About Barbara Kingsolver

Born 1955

Barbara Ellen Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. Her widely known works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo; and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a nonfiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. In 2023, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for the novel Demon Copperhead.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

3 More by Barbara Kingsolver

4 Similar books

Find a book that fits your moment