Oh my Lord. The girl has set her cap. Not my sister.
We talked the whole way through the Shenandoah Valley. The end of the day grew long on the hills, then the dark pulled in close around us. Snowflakes looped and glared in the headlights like off-season lightning bugs. Ridiculous nut that I’d been to crack. I drove left-handed with my right arm resting on her seat back, running my thumb over the little hairs on the back of her neck. The trip itself, just the getting there, possibly the best part of my life so far.
That’s where we are. Well past the Christiansburg exit. Past Richmond, and still pointed east. Headed for the one big thing
I know is not going to swallow me alive.
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to Charles Dickens for writing David Copperfield, his impassioned critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children in his society. Those problems are still with us. In adapting his novel to my own place and time, working for years with his outrage, inventiveness, and empathy at my elbow, I’ve come to think of him as my genius friend.
Many generous people helped me sketch out and color in the frames of this novel, offering their expertise on subjects ranging from foster care and child protective services to the logistics and desperations of addiction and recovery, Appalachian history, cartooning, and high school football. Mistakes are mine, authenticity is theirs: Camille Kingsolver, Reid Snow, Silas House, Kayla Rae Whitaker, Linda Snow, Amanda Freeman, Christine Dotson, Sue Ella Kobak, and Art Van Zee. Beyond the scope of this novel, we can all thank Dr. Van Zee for his groundbreaking exposure of dangerous prescription opioids, ultimately bringing the crisis to public attention. I’m in awe of his dedication to his patients.
The Origin Project, cofounded by Adriana Trigiani and Nancy Bolmeier-Fisher, enriches our schools and inspired my fictional Backgrounds project. Parts of this story came from my own Mammaw and Pappaw, Louise and Roy Kingsolver, and great-aunt Lillian Wright Craft, who still speak to me with the confidence of the living, in a language that my years outside of Appalachia tried to shame from my tongue.
Every draft of this book was improved by advice from insightful readers, especially Sam Stoloff, Terry Karten, Silas House, and Louisa Joyner. Judy Carmichael calmed the stormy seas and kept my little boat from sinking. Steven Hopp, in addition to reading and talking me through every page, kept me fed at my desk, accompanied me on fact-finding adventures, and pulled me outside into the sun, time and again, to get me back from the dark places this story needed me to go.
For the kids who wake up hungry in those dark places every day, who’ve lost their families to poverty and pain pills, whose
caseworkers keep losing their files, who feel invisible, or wish they were: this book is for you.
About the Author
Barbara Kingsolver is the author of nine bestselling works of fiction, including the novels Unsheltered, Flight Behavior, The Lacuna, Prodigal Summer, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as books of poetry, essays, and creative nonfiction. With her husband and daughters she authored the influential Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has earned literary awards and a devoted readership at home and abroad. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2000 was awarded the National Humanities Medal, our country’s highest honor for service through the arts. She lives with her husband on a farm in southern Appalachia.
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Also by Barbara Kingsolver
Fiction
Essays
High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never
Poetry
How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)
Another America
Nonfiction
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
Last Stand: America’s Virgin Lands
Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
demon copperhead. Copyright © 2022 by Barbara Kingsolver. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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first edition
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