She talks about the psychology of how we as humans find truth. She talks about wanting readers to come out with new ideas and new compassion. In her conversation as a guest of Georgia Center for the Book, Kingsolver reads from the novel. She says that Dickens told her that she needed to let the child tell the story, nobody doubts the child. To tell that story she turned to Charles Dickens because orphans and structural poverty were his wheelhouse. In her conversation with the audience she talks about how she wanted to tell the complex story of what the opioid epidemic has done to a generation of kids who have been orphaned by opioid-use disorder. I enjoyed listening to Barbara Kingsolver speak as a guest of the Georgia Center for the Book. “represent my people accurately, respectfully and with nuance, because Appalachians do not get good representation in the world and in the nation, in mainstream media.” Interviews with the author She loves southern Appalachia and considers it part of her mission to, as she puts it, Kingsolver lives in southwest Virginia, which she characterizes as ground zero for the opioid epidemic. I recommend reading the book before the guide. Note that this guide, like all of the guides, may contain spoilers. I appreciated how he shared the complicated lives of ex-miners, their children, their addictions, their resilience, their challenges and their fierce family love all intertwined in Appalachia. I often forgot how young he was given his depth of understanding of the traumas dealt out to everyone he knew in Lee County. I was there beside him on the slippery, rocky cliff above Devil’s Bathtub in a torrential downpour.

I walked with him from his birth through foster homes, and onto a football field into addiction, his people-wisdom and caring far outpacing his academics. I could hear him talking directly to me in each sentence. Demon’s writing style- for by the end I truly felt that Demon was writing this novel, rather than Kingsolver- got into my head. As I closed the book, I was so glad I had kept reading- Wow!ĭespite the horror and sadness of watching a train wreck that you can’t turn away from, I loved the second half of the book. I almost gave up on it, and didn’t because I so enjoyed Kingsolver’s previous books. I read half the book and wasn’t connecting. Oddly I had a hard time warming up to this novel. Barbara Kingsolver doesn’t tell a story in Demon Copperhead, she allows the reader to walk with Demon through his own story.

Demon copperhead review