Demon Copperhead, written by Barbara Kingsolver, is about a boy who was born with the ingrained destitution of generational misfortune. His mother was addicted to drugs, oscillating in-and-out of rehab programs, and his father was dead, leaving Demon with only his visual likeness and his name. No memories. Set in a coal mining town in Lee County, West Virginia, we see the lives of all its inhabitants tethered to their prospective tracks from the moment they’re born. The farmers stay farmers, the poor stay poor, the ones surrounded by drugs end up drowning in them and the ones born better off, end better off. Demon’s life starts predictably. I mean…of course his mother dies of an overdose. Duh, he, himself, gets into drugs. And this is only the tip of the crap of his life which is multiplied by the inherent difficulty of coming of age.

 However, the unsurprising events didn’t make for a boring book at all. There was so much nuance. I still found myself wondering what was going to happen next. Will Demon end up being a statistic or an exception? What kinda Houdini skills could he pull to escape the cycle? I thought the author did such a great job creating a realistic narrative that I saw in its pages the faces of people from my past. Growing up in an intersection of farm, suburbs, poverty, and excess, I’ve known a kid getting lost in the system, the aftermath of abuse, the allure of drugs, and those who can’t seem to claw their way out of the hole they were kicked into. As predictable as it may seem, there are still 1000 ways to die if one doesn’t break their own curse. So with a familiar urgency, I was rooting for a fictional boy named Demon and his attempt to break his.

One aspect of the story I found touching was his longing and repeated denial of a fostering home. He and his mother didn’t live in what would be considered a healthy environment, especially after the abusive boyfriend became a permanent fixture. Once Demon was put in the foster care system, he was shuttled between abusive and limiting homes that reinforced the already bleak perspective he had of how much fate had been woven into the coal smoke clouds above the town.

I found this book to be a more than a matter of entertainment, but also a form of testimony for those who couldn’t tell their story. Even Kingsolver, herself, dedicates the book to the survivors. And I can’t help but to draw parallels to the autobiographical, Black Boy by Richard Wright. Both boys inherited poverty, both found escape in a creative outlet, and they both had to fight to maintain a vision that the world didn’t start and end with what they saw in front of them. I think it’s extremely difficult not to be a product of one’s environment, but the stories also highlight the related challenge to create the necessary environments for individuals to proliferate because needs can be so specific and the world moves too fast for most people, including teachers and mentors, to fully invest.

This book hit multiple emotional topics for me and I wonder, myself, whether I’ll ever fully divulge the connections. A great book. Wish I could type more about it.