Devil's Bathtub

 “Demon Copperhead” by Barbara Kingsolver, 2022

This is a fictional story set in the Appalachian region of mountainous western Virginia, full of benighted and knighted people. Abusive stepfathers and husbands, druggies, kind neighbors, a cute DSS caseworker, dirty or cheap foster fathers, an imprisoned mom, a generous football coach, missing and dead fathers, Oxycontin, meth and a crew of kids trying to survive it all. Especially one, Damon Fields / Woodall, nicknamed Demon Copperhead for his red hair. He's quick and sees it as it is, even though he's trapped. It is somewhat of a stereotype of 'hillbilly' life that J.D. Vance would like, even though the residents make fun of the hillbilly insult as way off the mark.

Damon loves to draw superheroes and cartoons, and he sees his best friend and foster friends as superheroes too. This one has kindness as a superpower; this one climbing; this one a born leader; this one a real neighbor and friend, even though he might be gay. Damon is working up to challenging his cruel step-father and his weak, pill-poppin' pregnant mom. He's growing tall and big. His stepfather is a stereotype – a mechanic, wears sleeveless T's when he wears a shirt; fills the single-wide's living room with weights; rides a Harley and drives a pickup; drinks too much and is abusive to his new wife and 'son.' He even has a vicious black dog called Satan. Yeah, that guy. The most backasswards worker, though he really owns his own mobile repair truck, so... not really a worker with a boss. He's an “entrepreneur.”  There's a stint on a foster farm, where he and other boys are slaves to hay and tobacco, or with a family, sorting garbage for cash. 

That's the setup and it gets worse, better, than worse, then ... like a roller-coaster. Kingsolver lives in mountain Virginia, so her last books reflect that area. Its a detailed story of semi-poverty, junkies, instability and human grit, with Demon's jokes and insights thrown in hard. Like him hearing his stepfather say the family was going to be run like the military – even though he'd never been in the military. “He'd just seen the movie...”

So you're wondering how this 10 / 11 year old growing boy Damon is going to handle the misery when he becomes a full-grown teenager, then adult? He's growing up fast, child labor, hating school, seeing the dark side of town, dealing everywhere, but still with a rescue grand-mammaw / fairy god-mother, or maybe an art teacher. The story is in the first person eye of this worldly-wise kid – a kid who just wants to see the ocean. So is he going to become a real demon? That is the draw of the book. At bottom, its a familiar book about class – the lowest level at this point. As a reader, you're stuck there in his life, along for the ride wherever it goes.

Some political nuggets from the book: 1. Damon has a rare black teacher, who mentions that the hill people of Virginia proper never voted to secede in the Civil War and many backed the Union, resisting the idea of fighting for the low-land plantation slavers. 2. Damon is part 'Melungeon' – an insult word for 'mixed' parentage, which might mean Portuguese, Cherokee or African American or … It was used to get around race laws. Melungeon might have descended from indentured servants or slaves. 3. Given coal has been mechanized, played out or gone to mountain-top removal, what was left for jobs involved recruiters for the Army and Navy. They set up shop in the high schools. 4. Purdue Pharma and other drug companies sends reps to the mountain clinics with the most pain patients, to sell them more toxic painkillers. 5. And yes, hill people were later called 'rednecks' because at the massive Battle of Blair Mountain they wore red kerchiefs around their necks while shooting it out with the mining magnates' thugs and soldiers. (Something taught in the early 1970s...but many have not learned even yet.) 6. The local schools are purposely kept lousy so that local businesses can get cheap labor. 7. Hell, there's a clever insertion of Marx's theory of 'enclosing the common land' and turning everyone into wage slaves, and even class war. But she's afraid to come out and say it.

Is Demon Copperhead a play on David Copperfield, Dickens' orphan reject? Is this modern Dickensian writing? There is a sly reference to Dickens and orphans in the text, then she openly admits the debt in the Acknowledgments. Any recall of the original Dicken's novel confirms that many of the characters and situations are replicated here - the kind aunt, the creepy servant, the adored friend, the final stirrings of success.  

Does that tell us something about how capitalism 'changes' and yet doesn't? Or is it current Southern Gothic? A question for you literary analysts. Demon Copperhead is an enjoyable, engrossing and mordant book that will teach you more about modern Appalachia and this part of the South than reading its history. It challenges many of the stereotypes of toothless hicks. That is one of the virtues of 'fiction.' And Kingsolver is one of the best fiction writers in the U.S., so there's that too.

Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive using these terms: “White Trash,” “Hillbilly Elegy” (Vance); “Gray Mountain” (Grisham); “Suttree” and “Child of God” (both by McCarthy); “The Lacuna” (Kingsolver); “U.S. Cities With Lowest Life Expectancy,” “American Rust,” “The Hunger Games” “Red Baker.”

And I bought it at May Day's excellent fiction section!

Red Frog

January 9, 2023