Demon Copperhead

Demon is born in a trailer in Lee County, Virginia, to a teenage single mother, with nothing to his name but the handsome face he got from his late father, a head of copper hair, a sharp tongue and a gift for surviving. His mother is an addict, and he is soon at the mercy of the foster system, of farm work no child should do and of failing schools, with a spell of sporting success along the way. He tells his story himself, wisecracking on the surface but hungry for love beneath it, as the opioid epidemic spreads through a county already emptied out by the decline of coal and tobacco. His attachment to the place where people know him is tested to breaking point, not least by his own struggles with drugs and love. The novel moves Dickens's David Copperfield to modern Appalachia.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States

First published

2022

Author's age

67 when first published

ISBN

9780063251922 (Harper, United States)

9780063251984 (Harper Perennial, United States)

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Wikidata