This epic tale by Barbara Kingsolver follows the title character and the overwhelming obstacles he navigates in a community upended by the opioid crisis. Demon Copperhead re-envisions the Charles Dickens classic David Copperfield, setting it in modern-day Appalachia. It's Kingsolver's 17th novel in some three decades, and in writing it, she says she wanted to counter some of the condescension and downright snobbery directed at the region in which she was born and still lives, an area whose people, she believes, have been exploited for generations, most recently by pharmaceutical companies who targeted Appalachian residents and created the current opioid crisis.