By Robert McCool
After a spell of ill health, I find myself back at the books and the keyboard during a winter storm, ready to talk about a book I wanted to hate, but couldn't.
Barbara Kingsolver is a great writer who presents her stories as plain-faced as a tale can be. This leads to some unpleasant topics sometimes when a story absolutely must be told. Such is “Demon Copperhead” ($34.50 ISBN:987-0-06-326746-6), an Oprah's Book Club 2022 selection.
The book is all about a boy (Daemon) with red hair (Copperhead) growing up up in the Apalachicola South, with all its poverty–which means plenty of teen mothers and drugs, among other things like high school football, drinking excessively and having not much future to look forward to. On the other hand, family is tight and most important in life.
This is what Demon faces.
And this is why I wanted to hate this book. Not for the writing, which is brilliant, but for the subject matter. It hurts.
As a teenager in an alcoholic white-trash family, I was faced with one future with the Ford Motor Company. College was out of the question unless I alone did something about it. I moved out, and then worked for a university while I studied there. I did it, so why couldn't anybody try? I know from experience it's not that easy, and this book shows the dark side of futility. That's why it bothered me. I wanted to stop reading at times, but instead I couldn't put it down. It's a big book, 883 pages in large print, but I read it in three days. It's that good.
