Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

This is a modern day Dickens, the title echoing the surprisingly optimistic Dickens classic, David Copperfield. Dickens set his classic on his home turf, and so does Kingsolver--this is set in Appalachia. Our hero (or antihero) is Damon Fields, known as Demon and nicknamed Copperhead for his red hair, is born to a drug-using teenage single mother in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia. Even in this deprived neighborhood they stand out by being almost destitute. Since his mother is in and out of rehab, Demon is partly raised by the sprawling, warm-hearted Peggot clan. It’s all there in Dickens: the weak, infantile mother, ripe for abuse; the dead father and the disciplinarian boyfriend turned merciless stepfather; the bad odds against which no child stands a chance – and also the outsiders, some loving and others less so, who offer only a limited form of help. If you’re familiar with David Copperfield, then the arc of Demon Copperhead will hold few surprises, but the retelling is so well done, I was propelled through it to the end. The idealism and concern with social justice that are characteristic of Kingsolver’s worldview find their natural counterpart in Dickens’s impassioned social criticism, and I highly recommend both the classic and the modern updated version.