As I finished the last chapter of Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel DEMON COPPERHEAD, I reflected sadly that this could well be a work of nonfiction. Demon Copperhead ( David Copperfield of another generation) is born and raised into the institutional poverty that to this day prevails in southern Appalachia.

Kingsolver spares no evils of abject poverty upon the young. Children abandoned, often times at birth, through death and despair. Those surviving ( Demon Copperhead) face the blight of Foster Care, a failed educational system, ineffective social services, bad choices of relationships and the pervasiveness of the drug epidemic that today sweeps through the hills and hollers of the backcountry.

The New York Times review was correct in writing, Kingsolver creates images that stay with the reader.

No happy endings and no joy in this read but the NYT was on the mark about Kingsolver’s lasting images.