Dear Lit Loves,
Greetings! Taking a break from my normal routine of reading memoir as well as diverting my attention away from the recent death of my mom and attempting to administer her estate, I decided to read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Many reviewers have compared this book to Dickens and David Copperfield, but I choose to look at the work as standing on its own merits. Mrs. Kingsolver, author of nine bestsellers, poetry, and creative nonfiction constructed an outstanding novel about growing up as both an orphan and a young man who navigates his way through a disastrous foster care system while learning quite a few life lessons along the way.
Damon Fields, aka "Demon Copperfield", lives with his mom in rural Lee County, Virginia. His mom maintains a precarious life of addiction to drugs and alcohol. Damon's biological father died before he was born in a region known as the Devil's Bathtub which reminded me of a pond that is surrounded by rocks and trees. It most definitely was not a body of water anyone should swim in especially if you have no idea of the depth of the water or what inhabits the water. Interestingly, Damon is often called by his nickname "Demon" and also by the last name of "Copperhead". He befriends the grandson named Maggot of the neighbors who live beside he and his mom. Maggot and Damon are friends in their elementary years and have both endured chaos in their lives mainly due to the actions of both their mothers as Maggot's mom is in prison. Maggot's grandparents, The Peggotts, are the most stabilizing influence in both boys' young lives. Damon even travels with the Peggots to visit Maggot's Aunt June who lives and works as a nurse in Knoxville.
Essentially, Damon's mom marries a man who is a control-freak and who also abuses both Damon and his mother. Damon decides to stand up against this new man himself and defies him at all costs. Eventually, Damon finds himself with a deceased mom and now his future lies with The Department of Social Services. Damon first goes to the home of a man who takes in foster kids with the intent of utilizing them as farm workers to help with his crops. He meets one boy who he believes is a hero and another who becomes like a brother to him. Eventually, he is placed with another family who introduce him to a utility room with a dog bed for a bedroom and he often goes without food. After setting out on his own to locate his paternal grandmother, he finds himself hitchhiking, sleeping behind dumpsters, and getting robbed of what money he has. Interestingly, he keeps going.
Eventually, through a great deal of hitchhiking and endless walking he locates his paternal grandmother who sees her son in Damon and takes him in to stay with her, but not for long. Eventually, he goes to live with someone his paternal grandmother knows and trusts. The next family includes the football coach of a local high school football team and his daughter, Angus, who is about the same age as Damon. Even at this home, he learns the daughter lost her mom and her dad has a rather serious alcohol problem, but they live in a quite spacious house where Damon gets his own bedroom. The football coach's daughter, Angus, becomes a sincere friend to Damon and Damon teaches the Winfields how to celebrate Christmas.
Next, Demon comes across one of the boys from a previous foster home who he had admired. After hanging out with him years later, Damon realizes this guy is truly not much of a hero at all as his former hero now sells drugs, is arrogant, and does not treat girls with any respect. Damon does eventually make the high school football team which lends him some popularity, but he also gets injured and is treated with OxyContin which sends him on the road to addiction. Damon does find love in the form of Dori who has had to drop out of school to care for her dying father. She has a proclivity to sell and use some of the pain meds given to her by nurses helping to care for her dad. Eventually, Dori loses her dad to cancer and Damon moves into the home she shared with her dad to look after her. Alas, in time Dori succumbs to addiction as well.
When Damon learns that Maggot's grandfather, Mr. Peggottt, is dying he goes to pay his respects and learns Maggot has gone gothic and appears to be using drugs. Maggot's Aunt June has moved to Lee County near her parents and the girl she loves like a daughter, Emmy, has gone missing. The reader later learns that Emmy ran off with one of the boys Damon met in foster care and Aunt June, Maggot, and Damon locate her in an abandoned house somewhere in Atlanta. Emmy is found disheveled and strung out on drugs. Aunt June brings all of them home and promptly sends Emmy to a rehab center outside of Lee County, Virginia.
If there is one attribute very evident in Damon's character, it is his ability to persevere in the harshest of environments. He witnesses his one-time hero from foster care fall to his death while another boy related to the Peggottts dies in the process of trying to save Damon's former hero from his years in foster care. Maggot lands in jail and serves his time for delinquency and playing a part in the death of a relative and friend. Aunt June offers Damon an opportunity to turn his life around in a rehab center out of state. Three years at the rehab center are enough to help Damon learn to live without the use of drugs while also maintaining a job. Upon Damon's return to Lee County, he visits all the beauty of Lee County and living in the countryside that he has missed while in the city at a rehab center. He also returns to visit his last foster family, Coach Winfield and his daughter, Angus. Angus has now completed college and become a counselor and social worker.
The one skill Damon learned to refine and love in high school, drawing, becomes a means of saving himself. Two teachers took an interest in him while he attended high school and he later worked on a cartoon for the local newspaper with a fellow foster brother named Tommy. Much later in the story, a publisher takes interest in his cartoon stories and invites him to compile a book with the lessons from the newspaper cartoon strips he made for the local newspaper. In the end Damon finally gets to visit one place on earth he has always longed to visit and he is reunited with Angus, the football coach's daughter, who never missed an opportunity to set him straight when he was in high school and additionally tried to help him learn not to succumb to all the tragedy he has encountered in life, but to use the lessons he gained from a tumultuous childhood to assist him in making a better life for himself.
Creatively, the author had the Southern dialect of the Virginia region where the story takes place portrayed perfectly especially in the character of Damon. This book offers a clearly vivid perspective of what many children face daily in the foster care system. The epidemic of the opioid crisis is vividly portrayed among the characters in the book and its effects on the population of Lee County, Virginia. Also, I liked that the author included characters throughout the book that remained invested in the main character, Damon, even though they did not have to because in my opinion every child/person needs someone to believe in them and to teach them how to believe in themselves. Finally, this book demonstrates perseverance and reads like a guide on how to save yourself when you encounter some of the most cruel, demeaning, and humbling aspects of life.
A quite fine book that I highly recommend!
Til my next review,
Grace (Amy)
