Literary Fiction · Free kit
Demon Copperhead
Lee County, Virginia, at the start of the opioid years: Damon Fields is born on a trailer bathroom floor to an eighteen-year-old mother already underwater, and the neighbor who kicks the door in will later call him a little blue prizefighter. Everyone else calls him Demon Copperhead — copper-wire hair, a Melungeon father already dead at the Devil's Bathtub, a kid who keeps asking for the ocean. Kingsolver retells David Copperfield through a tobacco farm that bills itself as a home, a high-school football house, a feed-store love story, and a county where the pills arrived before the help did. The voice is funny on purpose. The ledger is not.
“Save or be saved, these are questions. You want to think it's not over till the last page.”
Complete free book club kit
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Plan your meeting
Demon Copperhead Hosting Guide
A free, printable-minded plan for hosting Demon Copperhead.
Invite hook
“Lee County, a trailer bathroom, a copper-headed kid, and a library screensaver of the ocean. Barbara Kingsolver's 2022 Pulitzer novel is long, funny on purpose, and built for a table that can talk about foster care and the pill pipeline without turning anyone present into a case study.”
The question you’re arguing about: Which labor would you honor out loud: the person who could not legally claim you, or the person who finally drove you toward the water?
Shopping list
- □Cornbread in a skillet and a pot of soup beans with onions — Lee County supper, nothing fancy
- □Pimento-cheese sandwiches or thick tomato sandwiches on white bread
- □Peanut-butter Nabs and MoonPies — gas-station honors, the snacks a kid can actually get
- □Fried chicken or a tray of roasted chicken thighs if you want a main
- □Apple butter and biscuits, plus a bowl of cut apples
- □Sweet tea, coffee, hot tea, lemonade, apple juice, and sparkling water
- □Copper or rust napkins, a few printed wave postcards, and a sprig of something green that looks like a ridge
- □Printed bingo cards, trivia slips, extra pens, and a box of tissues
Day-of timeline
- 0–10 minWelcome with sweet tea, coffee, lemonade, or sparkling water. Icebreakers only — nicknames, neighbors, no plot.
- 10–20 minTrivia warm-up. Start easy with the caul, the Generals, Red Neck. Save the Bathtub, Atlanta, and the last drive for after discussion.
- 20–55 minMain discussion: the placements, the prescription, Emmy, who gets credited for the ending. Leave a content pause on the table.
- 55–75 minSpeed debate: Were the Peggots right not to adopt? Timer on. This one will try to steal the night.
- 75–90 minBingo leftover squares, rate the book in one word (ban "powerful" and "heartbreaking" — make them work), vote on next month.
Surprise touch
Print a cheap postcard of waves — the library-computer ocean Demon stared at — and set one at each seat with a blank back. Mid-evening, ask anyone who wants to write the first place they wanted to see that was bigger than their town. Tuck the cards under a copper penny or a piece of craft-store copper wire. It is inexpensive, specific to the screensaver and the last drive, and it lets the room touch the book's hunger without performing anyone's worst chapter.
Wrap-up
- □Group photo with the wave postcards, a paperback, or a copper penny
- □Quick rating: 1–5 stars and one word each (try to ban heartbreaking and powerful)
- □Vote on next month's book together