Review of "Demon Copperhead" by Barbara Kingsolver

I finished this a few weeks ago, but it has taken me ages to get around to writing a review...perhaps because I hoped that I would have something profound to say, but I haven't. It was a great and mainly enjoyable novel, even though the subject matter was anything but enjoyable. It's a retelling of Dickens's "David Copperfield", but relocated to the Appalachian mountains. It focuses on an orphaned poor White boy, and his progress through the "care" system. It has Dickens's eye for the details and the nuts and bolts of institutions, and how they grind people down. And it's set against the background of the opioid plague that has devastated regions like that, as well as much of the rest of the US.

It's a great book, another triumph from Barbara Kingsolver.