Despite doomed relationships and his own addiction, Demon invents his own superhero in the popular “Red Neck” comics he publishes anonymously.
Perennial bestseller and author of Oprah’s Book Club pick The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver has long been a Dickens evangelist. But her 2023 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Demon Copperhead(also an Oprah's Book Club selection) is her most explicit homage, using the structure of David Copperfield as a North Star and featuring characters with 1:1 stand-ins for the Dickens cast. David Copperfield is the loosely autobiographical saga of a 19th-century British orphan’s education, loss of innocence, and rise to novelistic celebrity. (At the time, novelists were the equivalent of today’s A-list actors, and Dickens was a major public figure.) Meanwhile, Kingsolver’s main character, Demon Copperhead, named for his red hair and fiery personality, pinballs through a series of homes—first the neighbors, then a foster family, then his high school football coach—searching for both family and meaning after his mother dies of an overdose. Despite doomed relationships and his own addiction, Demon invents his own superhero in the popular “Red Neck” comics he publishes anonymously. Our advice? Read both epics about lost children who find themselves.