Reading | Demon Copperhead

Damon Copperhead | Barbara Kingsolver

Deep in the mountains of rural Virginia, a boy named Damon is born into a life of trouble. His daddy's long gone, his mama struggles to provide for the boy, and at a tender age, Damon learns that no one is going to look out for him but himself. As his life goes from bad to worse to wretched, Damon stares down the foster care system, child abuse, addiction culture, and a host of other evils. No wonder his friends start to calling him Demon. 

The story is told in breathless first person, as if we are sitting on the front stoop listening to Damon spin his yarn and he needs to wrap it up before the first star comes out. Though he relates his life adventures with an unemotional nonchalance, we feel Damon's heart break again and again, and we celebrate his few-and-far-between successes with soaring happiness. Barbara Kingsolver's ability to wrap the reader into Damon's world is exhilarating, and the 546 pages spin by in a whirl.

Charles Dickens' classic, David Copperfield, inspired the author to pen this story as an updated tale about the dangers of institutional poverty and its effect on children. Though Dickens first warned us a century and a half ago of the abuses children face in our society, Kingsolver reminds us that we still have much work to do.

* * * * *

I love a person who is addicted to drugs. Not just a little bit. All the way, as ferociously addicted as anyone can possibly be. He uses Oxycodone, heroin, Fentanyl, Xanax, and meth. At the same time. And I'm well aware that there are plenty of people in this world who would write him off, consider him worthless, throw him in the trash.

But I know him.

 

I know his story. 

At the time, I thought my life couldn't get any worse. Here's some advice: Don't ever think that.

I know the heartbreak that has tormented him all his life, that knitted together his growing brain, that baked into his cells since the moment of his conception. 

I know the unrelenting stories of loss and tragedy and abuse that make up his life. 

I know how hard he has tried to break free of the drugs that provide him a certain amount of relief from the trauma.

I know how desperately he has failed to stay sober.

We both lay back down, and she looked me in the eyes, and we were sad together for a while. I'll never forget how that felt. Like not being hungry.

Now I'm not going to sit here and say that none of this is his fault, that he's an innocent victim, that the world is to blame for his tragedies. He would not want me to say that.

But I will say that our society fails children every day. 

Children like Damon. 

Children like my friend.

And while I could point a finger at the schools, the foster care system, and every other institution that is supposed to protect kids from danger, I know they can't do it alone.

People love to believe in danger, as long as it's you in harm's way and them saying, "Bless your heart."

It's up to all of us - every you and me - to watch out for the vulnerable children in our midst.

Children like Damon.

Children like my friend.

We need to love them.

Protect them.

Speak up on their behalf.

Take risks for them.

Feed them.

Read to them.

Put coats on their backs and shoes on their feet.

Talk to them and listen as they talk back.

Love on them some more.

Protect them.

And pray that someday our world will be kinder to all of its children.