Cbr18bingo Repair: novel deals with drug addiction and rehab, broken individuals and a broken community
I had a hard time choosing which bingo square to use for this one, so many could apply. Left — because so many characters and their community have been left behind. Refuge — characters take refuge in drug use to deal with physical and other pains. Or —main character ultimately has to make a major either/or decision about his life.
Demon Copperhead is Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize winning re-imagination of Dickens’ David Copperfield (which I have not read). Coming in at over 500 pages, it is a brick of a book but I could not put it down. Instead of orphans and working poor in Victorian England, Kingsolver gives us foster kids and the rural poor of Virginia in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Narrated by Demon himself, the story begins with his own beginning: born on the floor of his drug addicted single teen mom’s trailer. The story goes that Demon (real name Damon, but everyone goes by a nickname in this community) came out of his mother in the caul, and because of that he would never die from drowning. Even if true, it certainly didn’t protect Demon from every other sling and arrow that life could hurl at him. And of those, there were many. Just as Dickens’ novel drew attention to the harsh and unjust conditions that urban workers endured, Kingsolver illustrates for her readers the plight of the rural Appalachian poor. This is a community that supported itself through limited farming and coal mining. But the mines are closing and those who worked them often suffer from physical disabilities as a result of the backbreaking work. Nonetheless, the grandparents of this community believe in family and community, and they watch out for one another. Demon’s mom lived in a trailer owned by the Peggots, a large and generous family that has seen its share of heartache. The Peggots try to help Demon and his mom, with Demon becoming fast childhood friends with their live-in grandson Maggot. Demon’s mother, who has no family and was raised as a foster child, struggles with her addiction, drifting in and out of rehab and employment. Demon’s father, about whom he knows nothing, died in an accident before Demon was born. When mom hooks up with a new boyfriend named Stoner, 10 year-old Demon’s life changes for the worse.
The story of Demon Copperhead is one of poverty and abuse. The official supports, like the Department of Social Services, are few in number and underwhelming. Foster children are a source of income for some unscrupulous people who use the support funds meant for the child to support themselves. Some view the children as free labor. Demon will end up meeting a variety of vile adults and other children who find themselves more or less incarcerated in foster care. And when it comes down to a child’s word against an adult’s, the adult receives the benefit of the doubt. While the tragedies pile up, Demon makes a couple of important discoveries: he is very good at drawing; he possesses athletic prowess on the football field; and his father’s people are out there somewhere.
Kingsolver gives us a cast of well developed, often tragic, characters. Some of the adults, like Stoner and U-Haul (this novel’s Uriah Heep) are vicious and cruel. Others, such as Demon’s art and English teachers and June Peggot, offer the possibility of salvation. Amongst Demon’s peers, most are as lost and messed up as he is. Drugs, particularly OxyContin and Fentanyl, are making inroads into this community through unscrupulous doctors and drug reps. It’s not long before teens are experimenting with more than just booze and weed. While the adults Demon looks up to try to convince him and his peers that there is more for them out there, that they are not the stereotypes that others impose on them or somehow doomed to repeat their parents’ mistakes, it is hard for Demon to really believe that.
Kingsolver’s characters will suffer through addiction, withdrawal, violence, love, death, and grief. Side characters have their own story arcs that are well developed and circle back to Demon and his journey. This was an outstanding read, heartbreaking, eye-opening and yet still hopeful in the end.
