NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

This novel resonates strongly with our community. Its social messages about foster care, child hunger, poverty and opioid addiction are all too familiar. Kingsolver has successfully created an authentic voice for her teenage protagonist, a voice at once heart-breaking, humorous (often at his own expense), and ultimately resilient. (Milwaukee Public Library).

The story tells of an American lad born in undesirable circumstances in rural USA, and despite multiple hardships, immoral and criminal adults and not much better peers, flawed social work systems and staff, unscrupulous drug companies and general practitioners and with few positive role models, Demon eventually beats the odds. Kingsolver is at her best; her writing is clear, punchy and empathetic and the story is fast moving with twists and turns, some unanticipated, some pleasantly surprising, some very sad and many despairing. (State Library of South Australia).

The thrilling if oftentimes bleak adventures of a young man Damon born into a life of poverty, corruption and addiction in the Appalachian mountains. An epic but engrossing read. (Waterford City & County Libraries).

Demon Copperhead cleverly reimagines Dickens’s story, David Copperfield, in the modern-day rural American South, wrought with hunger, cruelty and addiction. Despite the constant challenges life throws at Demon, his resiliency and determination to survive overpower any obstacle he faces. This is a coming of age story of hope that all should consider as a rallying cry for America’s concern for its lower classes. (New Hampshire State Library)