FBCL - Reading Between the Spines Book Discussion

Book:  Demon Copperhead

Author:  Barbara Kingsolver

Demon Copperhead is set in the mountains of southern Appalachia. It’s the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens’ anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can’t imagine leaving behind.

Reading Between the Spines is a book discussion event specifically for members of The Friends of the Brown County Library.   We will lend you the book to read prior to the event once you have signed up through the sign-up website.  We will send an email letting you know how and when to pick up the book.

There are 12 spots available to join the book event, and it will be first come first serve.  To sign up, click this link: 

HTTPS://SIGNUP.COM/GO/YNKFXNP