Demon Copperhead

Demon Copperhead is a modern retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, set in the Appalachian mountains of Virginia. Demon is born to a teenage single mother in a single-wide trailer, his father already dead from an overdose. When his mother succumbs to her own addiction, Demon enters a foster care system that fails him repeatedly, placing him with abusive caregivers, exploitative farmers, and indifferent institutions. He finds brief moments of salvation—a loving grandmother, his talent for art, a football coach who believes in him—but the opioid epidemic sweeping through his community pulls everyone he loves into its grip. Narrated in Demon's distinctive, darkly humorous voice, the novel is both a searing indictment of how America abandons its most vulnerable children and a deeply compassionate portrait of a community ravaged by poverty, addiction, and pharmaceutical greed.

Barbara Kingsolver is an American novelist and essayist raised in rural Kentucky. Her best-known works include The Poisonwood Bible and The Bean Trees. Demon Copperhead won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2023, making Kingsolver one of few authors to win both awards for the same book.